Conflicting statements from government and opposition figures have raised questions about how talks on appointing Malta’s next Chief Justice unfolded, as the stalemate over his successor persists.

The issue also emerged as the main topic of last week’s episode of Il-Każin, with government MP Ramona Attard and opposition MP Darren Carabott facing off on Wednesday evening.

The debate, which was ostensibly over whether the government respects Malta’s institutions, quickly shifted to the handling of the chief justice appointment, with Attard and Carabott both making a series of contentious claims about the matter.

Here are some of the key claims made during the debate.

Claim: When did discussions over a new Chief Justice kick off?

Verdict: Talks between the government and the opposition are likely to have started towards mid-January.

Throughout the debate, Attard and Carabott disputed when talks between the government and opposition on potential candidates first began.

Replying to a question from the audience, Attard claimed that discussions had started long before the name of Consuelo Scerri Herrera, the government’s first choice for the role, emerged in late January.

Carabott, on the other hand, argued that talks had only just started shortly before parliament took a vote on Scerri Herrera’s nomination in early February.

Attard and Carabott speaking on Il-Każin.

A series of public declarations throughout the previous weeks help set out a timeline of events.

In late December, during the typically quiet week between Christmas and the new year, several government and opposition sources told Times of Malta that talks between the government and opposition were yet to begin, five weeks ahead of incumbent Mark Chetcuti’s mandatory retirement date in early February.

Opposition leader Alex Borg doubled down on this a fortnight later.

In a Facebook reel posted on January 11, Borg said he had yet to be summoned by Robert Abela to discuss Chetcuti’s potential successor.

This seems to have kicked things off, with the Abela and Borg holding informal talks the following day, during which Consuelo Scerri Herrera’s name was allegedly first mentioned, according to an exchange of public letters between the two party leaders published later in the month.

By the following week, talks were seemingly in full flow, with Justice Minister Jonathan Attard on January 19 saying discussions were ongoing between himself and opposition shadow minister Joe Giglio, as well as between the prime minister and opposition leader.

Scerri Herrera’s name was first made public on January 28, with Attard confirming that she was the government’s nominee for the role.

Claim: Government named Scerri Herrera because of a parliamentary vote forcing its hand.

Verdict: This is false. Scerri Herrera’s candidature was announced a week before a parliamentary vote was held.

Throughout the discussion, Ramona Attard rebutted the suggestion that Scerri Herrera’s nomination should have remained confidential, arguing that the government was forced to make its preferred candidate known when presenting a motion in parliament.

In essence, Attard argued that since the government was obliged to present a parliamentary motion for a vote on the incumbent Chief Justice’s successor, it was inevitable for Scerri Herrera’s name to emerge in public.

Ramona Attard said the government had to reveal Scerri Herrera’s nomination.

But, in reality, Scerri Herrera’s name emerged as the government’s preferred candidate long before the issue ever made it to parliament.

On January 28, Justice Minister Jonathan Attard told Times of Malta that Scerri Herrera was the government’s candidate and “the person who has been proposed by the prime minister and myself” for the role.

This was the first time her name had been publicly mentioned by either a government or opposition figure.

This was almost a full week before the government moved a motion, on February 3, for parliament to hold a vote on Scerri Herrera’s nomination the following day, the date of the incumbent Chief Justice’s mandatory retirement.

The motion would eventually be defeated the following day, sending plans for a new chief justice back to the drawing board.

Claim: The judiciary was in favour of raising judges’ retirement age.

Verdict: The sitting chief justice said he was ‘disappointed’ that a bill proposing reforms, which included raising judges’ retirement age was not approved, but he did not expressly refer to the retirement age issue.

Government figures have frequently argued that a bill presented last year to, among other things, raise judges’ retirement age, could have avoided the current stalemate, had it been approved.

The reforms proposed a series of changes to Malta’s judiciary, most pertinently offering judges the option to retire at the age of 70, rather than the current mandatory retirement age of 68.

This would have meant that incumbent Mark Chetcuti would have served a further two years in the role before the hunt for his successor would kick off.

However, being a constitutional amendment, the reforms required the support of two-thirds of parliament to be pushed through.

The bill failed to make it through parliament, with the opposition voting against the amendments, saying it was against piecemeal amendments to the constitution, rather than wholesale reform.

The issue was raised during Il-Każin when an audience member asked Darren Carabott whether the opposition agreed with raising judges’ retirement age, describing this change as having been suggested by the judiciary.

The question prompted an instant response from Carabott, who asked for the claim to be substantiated.

An audience member asking where the PN stands on the proposed amendments.

At the time when the bills were moved, Justice Minister Jonathan Attard had said that the proposed amendments had been discussed with the association of judges, with some being motivated by proposals by the chief justice himself.

Attard had also tabled a signed agreement with the association representing the judiciary, in which the association pushed for the introduction of a standards commissioner for the judiciary. However, the agreement made no mention of the other proposed amendments on the table, including that of raising the judiciary’s retirement age.

Shortly after the bills were shot down, the chief justice returned to the topic at the opening of the forensic year, describing his “personal disappointment” at parliament’s inability to find a consensus on the amendments and push them through.

Chetcuti stopped short of expressing his views on each amendment within the bill, instead just commenting on two proposed amendments which he had suggested in previous speeches, neither of which was the raising of the judiciary’s retirement age.

Previous chief justices had spoken more directly about raising retirement ages across the judiciary.

In 2009, then-chief justice Vincent de Gaetano called for judges’ mandatory retirement age to be changed from 65 to 68.

However, he added, a chief justice should vacate the post and go back to being a regular judge upon turning 65.

The judiciary’s retirement age was eventually raised to 68 in November 2020.

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