In his sentence uploaded here, Judge Toni Abela made incorrect statements which can be counteracted with a consistent series of European case law. The Judge handed a very political sentence which also included personal remarks taken from articles by Saviour Balzan. At best it’s sloppy work and at worse it’s a sentence aimed directly at my work and the press.
The Judge said that the press can’t feel entitled to criticise the failings of the justice system. This is incorrect. European case law has consistently defended the right of journalists to criticise the justice system and the judiciary. The judiciary and the attorney-general are also considered as public persons and they can also be subject to public scrutiny.
The press has every right to claim that the justice system is failing and also bring evidence for such claims.
The judge is also quoting Saviour Balzan in his articles saying that I blackmail people against my work. Ironically I have just won a libel case against an individual who just made these claims. I also know that the Judge is quoting directly from Saviour Balzan because during the Court proceedings he used the same descriptions and adjectives that Saviour Balzan uses against me, such as “literary terrorist”. During the Court proceedings I very politely contradicted the Judge and told the Court that the claim was made vexatiously by my competitor. The Court didn’t take heed of this and kept insisting on using these derogatory terms in my regard.
I don’t think this is the appropriate behaviour of the Judge, but I was polite enough to keep my mouth shut and let the proceedings take their pace. Being polite got me so far.
The sentence doesn’t make sense and reads like a political treatise about the supremacy of the Court’s opinion over public opinion. It also sounds very personal.
Ironically, during his closing address, the judge criticised those who attacked members of the judiciary on a personal basis, yet he cowardly omitted the real culprit: the Labour Party. It is the Labour government and the Prime Minister who have attacked members of the judiciary while pursuing direct interests that affected them. How sad, and even troubling, that a Judge would end his career by meekly submitting to the government while launching a personal attack against a journalist.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister and the Labour Party are celebrating the decision.
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