When Spanish lawmakers approved a bill that would allow the government to change the composition of the Spanish constitutional court, a heated debate on setting the borders between the judicial and the executive powers polarized Spain. While addressing a Labour party rally in Birkirkara, Malta, on Sunday, Prime Minister Robert Abela triggered a similarly polarizing debate when he said that he chatted on lenient judiciary with a magistrate who told him that even when lower courts decided to inflict harsher sentences on criminals, these sentences would be reduced on appeal.
This unusually daring and embarrassing statement, with the much indignation it stirred across the country, has the undertone of a slip of a tongue. Yet, according to Maltese blogger Manuel Delia, it was not. His argument is that “Robert Abela worked in the law courts for years,” and therefore, “he knows that the idea of questioning a magistrate’s decisions and urging different decisions in private conversations with that magistrate” has an ethical, political, and even legal cost.
He thus concludes that “it’s not a slip of the tongue because Robert Abela knows it’s taboo to have behind-closed-doors conversations with magistrates. And I say it’s not a slip of the tongue because by openly normalising and reversing this taboo he has brought, in the public’s perception, the judiciary under his thumb. And that’s something he wants.”
A similar view was reiterated by Bernerd Grech, leader of the Maltese opposition. “It is evident that Robert Abela wants to continue controlling institutions,” he said as Newsbook.com.mt reports. The Chamber of Advocates joined in the public backlash against Abela in a rare intervention in political controversies, reminding the Prime Minister that his statement constitutes a breach of the judicial code of ethics.
If these reactions are meant to convey the idea that societies are determined to preserve an existent ideal world where politicians do not try to influence the judiciary- a world that Mr. Abela almost missed the chance to perpetuate-, the truth should be said that the world they are painting is too good to be true. If, on the other hand, they are pushing for more reserved statements, on the part of the executive, so as to treat politics like other human necessities that might involve some perversion we should not talk about, then that world they are aspiring for is called “reality.” But the latter should not be synonymous with accepting what is deemed in the manner Thomas Paine describes the State as a “necessary evil”. It is rather about acknowledging the actual necessity of that evil in order to overcome it in the future.
Disentangling the political from the judicial is unrealistic. Politics is done publicly and behind closed doors. Reality is that these influences are inevitable. Realism is to take lessons on how to encourage transparency and to draw up an assessment of the progress of the rule of law.
Politicians can influence the judicial system in a variety of ways. First, a politician who has a parliamentary majority can use it to make – or to threaten to make- laws that interfere with the judicial system, as the government of Pedro Sanchez has recently done in Spain. Secondly, they can influence them through instigating public controversies. Judges are citizens who have political views which can be provoked during political controversies. Thirdly, they can do that directly even when the law prohibits it because such “crimes” can be done secretly or through intermediaries be they human or technological.
Another reality that should not be overlooked is that crime is as dangerous as political recklessness -probably even more dangerous. Abela’s revelations came while he was commenting on growing crime incidents in Malta that cost Pelin Kaya, a Turkish young woman her life. The right to life is the most important of human rights and governments should do what it could take them to protect it.
