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Office of the Prime Minister erects bureaucratic wall to MaltaToday questions
It’s official: All MaltaToday questions and requests for comments to government ministers and departments have to be filtered through the Department of Information (DOI), under the scrutiny of the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).
The unprecedented gate-keeping exercise against an independent newspaper means that every official request sent to ministries and government departments, as well as the answers, will be vetted and edited through the government’s central office at Castille.
Replying to questions sent by MaltaToday, Emanuel Abela, the director of DOI, said that Office of the Prime Minister had “advised all Communications Co-ordinators (of ministers and parliamentary secretaries) that DOI has advised MaltaToday to refer all ‘requests for comments’ to DOI”.
The decree is directed to MaltaToday alone, and no other newspapers. The Labour Party media – traditionally the prime enemy of the Party in government - for example, is free to ask questions to government ministries and departments as it so pleases, and expect answers from them; while MaltaToday is now constrained to wait until the replies to its questions are vetted by both the ministries involved and the OPM and then relayed to the DOI before being sent on.
This effectively means prolonging indefinitely access to basic information such as the infamous list of employees appointed to work at the Brussels Permanent Representation with Richard Cachia Caruana, as well as hindering unduly the free flow of information in the public interest. Inevitably, transparency and the readers’ right to know are the main victims of this decision.
However, the majority of ministers and parliamentary secretaries have so far ignored the office of the prime minister’s directions and have kept their information channels open as usual for MaltaToday.
News of the Prime Minister’s office’s decision came days after PN Secretary General Joe Saliba asked the MaltaToday newsroom to submit all questions to him and requests for comment in writing when called by phone. In some instances when he replied over the phone he insisted that he was recording the telephone conversation. It also followed a vexatious libel case piloted by Saliba and the Prime Minister, and signed by the PN administrative council, against MaltaToday.
The government justified its decision, stating that it was taken following “numerous instances wherein MaltaToday were sending the same questions to a number of ministries without providing an indication as to whom they have been sent”.
In actual fact, similar questions about the Brussels embassy were sent to the Foreign Ministry and to the Office of the Prime Minister given that no information was forthcoming until Richard Cachia Caruana’s responsibility in “conceiving, controlling and pushing” the controversial Lm9 million property purchase was established.
Cachia Caruana is the only unelected Cabinet member. He has, so far, refused to grant an interview to MaltaToday.
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