Ivan Martin attempts to put blame on the Office of the President of the Republic for the incompetence of the prosecution

Ivan Martin penned an article about what had happened in court whereby a person, who was being accused of crime walked out scot-free after the prosecution failed, more than once to appear in court.

What transpires from this case is that the President of the Republic had to be informed to give his consent so that the case could go on. Thus the Office of the President of the Republic is being blamed for this fact when in truth, it is the prosecution that needs to be blamed for failing to bring the witnesses within the prescribed period according to law. As this failed to happen, there was the safety valve for this office to write to the ministry of justice so that the ministry askes the president’s authorization for the case to continue. Ivan Martin tells us that the President’s office failed to reply. However, Ivan Martin does not seem to have checked whether the Justice Ministry had informed the Office of the President or not that there was a need for a presidential authorization for this particular case to continue. In truth, the Justice Ministry had informed the president and the President’s office had duly returned with signature the required letter on October 14, 2021.

The name of the person in charge of this whole mess was not mentioned. What I can state is that when I started criticising the working of this office, the deputy advocate general of the Republic, Philip Galea Farrugia, made a very strong statement in court that I am terrorizing him. I am mentioning specifically his name because he is the deputy attorney general and the one whose name appears in the media as the person who has an overarching power at this office where prosecutions are concerned. 

It is about time that the Minister responsible for Justice starts an investigation, in this case, to establish why the prosecutors failed to appear in court and unearth what actually went wrong in this particular case.

The innuendos in this article were clearly aimed to discredit the Office of the President.