“I am not exactly the government’s blue-eyed-girl – for reasons everyone knows – and the fact I am married to Magistrate Mizzi may have something to do with the sudden pangs of conscience from the Commission for the Administration of Justice. Why pick on these two individuals when many other persons have appeared in front of the commission?”
This is what former Sea Malta chairman Marlene Mizzi has written in an unashamed defence of her husband Magistrate Antonio Mizzi in today’s MaltaToday over the public indictment of Mizzi and Judge Lino Farrugia Sacco by the Commission on what it termed a conflict of interest for the two members of the Bench who are also officers of sports organisations.
“His role as President of the Basketball Association has been an issue with the Commission for the Administration of Justice who have deemed his posting as being in breach of the judiciary’s code of ethics.”
Renowned for her no holds barred approach, Mizzi criticises the Commission for publicising a three-month-old correspondence it had with Farrugia Sacco and Mizzi over their presumed conflicts as presidents of sports associations.
She argues: “The CAJ chose to inform the media of a letter indicating breach of ethics by the two members of the judiciary. The letter written to my husband, Tonio Mizzi, was sent to him on 7 August 2007, that is, more than three months ago. Now, if the honourable members of the CAJ thought it fit and proper that the general public should be made aware of the grave danger that the judge and magistrate are inflicting on society, why did they wait until now to do so?”
But Mizzi reserves her strongest words when stating her suspicion that a name and shame game is in the offing:
“…readers may be interested in an issue which has by far more serious connotations than whether Tonio Mizzi should be a Magistrate as well as the President of the Malta Basketball Association or not. They will also learn that this issue has absolutely nothing to do with ethics, but with a name and shame exercise embarked upon for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the administration of justice.”
She also asks whether the CAJ, which is presided by President Edward Fenech Adami, has “anything of a more serious nature to waste its time upon?”
Marlene Mizzi, who resigned from her post as Sea Malta Chairman when stating her opposition to the privatisation of the national shipping line, recently stated on PBS she would consider a candidacy with a party that could “bring about change”, in clear reference to the Malta Labour Party.

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Marlene Mizzi:

People in glass houses...