A year has passed since the current Minister of Justice inaugurated the Family Court building in Strait Street, Valletta, on December 16th, 2003. The plastic plaque commemorating the inauguration of the Family Court building was prophetic because a building was inaugurated, but the Family Court is still a long way off from being inaugurated!

This terse message is not to be interpreted as an insult to the many, well- intentioned individuals who have been working hard for many years, not merely since we have had a change in name (what’s in a name?), but this message is meant to underline the numerous infrastructural necessities that still have to be met.

The first major fault would appear to be that neither the honourable Minister of Justice nor the Parliamentary Secretary for Justice (both of them good, honourable friends of mine), appear to really care whether the Family Court functions or not: they give me the impression that they belong to those group of individuals in this country who consider persons involved in matrimonial conflicts or in personal disputes relating to intimate matters as something of anathema in our society, and not to be given the attention that they deserve in their personal and intimate conflicts, which leave so much suffering!

I hope I am wrong in this assessment of these two, very honourable friends of mine: but then how can they explain that following the unfortunate mishap to Mr. Justice Raymond C. Pace, all activities connected with various pending cases before the contentious Civil Court: Family Section have come to a halt? Could not they have intervened (if they truly cared), and issued statements assuring the individuals involved (who are proportionately-speaking a considerable number), and at the same time allaying their anxieties that their Court Procedures will not be effected in their private quest for a solution to their turmoils in their private lives, a quest that may lead to a more stable and perhaps happier life for the individuals involved?

It is thanks to Mr. Justice Raymond C. Pace that while he could have had very easily decided not to attend Court at all during his period of recovery, thanks to his credit he did come to the Court on more occasions than perhaps he should have, and delivered in this delicate period of convalescence for him more than one hundred judgments!

The Minister of Justice and the Parliamentary Secretary for Justice failed to comfort those involved in such lawsuits that their interests were being seen to not only through never-ending mediation efforts, but through a concretization as to how the lives of these individuals will be restructured following the breakdown of their marriages or the breakdown of private intimate relationships that may have been going on, especially where the interests of minors are involved.

The conciliatory phase of these procedures (which formally, before December 16th, 2003, used to be known as the Second Hall of the Civil Court), are for five months only (in the words of our Chief Justice), in the able hands of Mr. Justice Geoffrey Valenzia who did his very best, considering that he had to handle other lawsuits relating to Civil and Commercial matters, which have nothing to do with the Family Court!

Mr. Justice Valenzia did his best in the circumstances, having his hands tied as numerous applications that were filed and keep being filed at a very alarming rate, relate to lawsuits, which are pending. It may not be fair for any decision to be given considering that the merits of such lawsuits are before the same Court but being presided over by a different Judge. Where were the Minister of Justice and the Parliamentary Secretary for Justice to explain the situation to the people in words that they can understand?

In these delicate family matters, echoing unfortunately the words of the Parliamentary Secretary for Justice, the experiment would seem to have been that we move on by trial and error, but at the expense of the ‘victims’ involved!

The infrastructure at the Family Court building leaves much to be desired: the public lifts were and still are not working, and another lift which is being used now also by the general public is proving useful, but it is no excuse for the designated public lifts to be left in a state of unfunctionability (as they still are at the time of dictating this communication), for many months now!

Whatever the Minister of Justice’s PRO might write, facilities in the Family Court Toilets lack a basic asset: toilet paper or tissues where one can dry one’s hands once a public convenience has been made use of. We had almost to reach ridiculous levels of not having enough chairs were people making use of the Court Halls and Court Rooms can sit down: take the Criminal Family Court for instance, where apart from the fact that the Hall is small with a low ceiling, the intimate objective as to why such a Family Criminal Court was set up is not there: thank god that we had an excellent appointment in the person of Magistrate Dr. Anthony Vella who makes great effort to put the people involved in such lawsuits at ease, considering the tension that they may be going through, the awaiting that takes place in a restricted corridor and on the steps immediately outside this Court Room.

Mediators have made a lot of effort to cope up with the numerous difficulties they had to surmount: they have inadequately furnished rooms, and some of them not even a telephone at their disposal to be able to communicate with the Family Court Registry, where we have the ridiculous situation that for the Family Court Registry to get in touch with some of the Mediators, the use of mobile phones have to be made thereby incurring unnecessary expenses where the installing of a fixed line would have been more practical and certainly much cheaper.

The Family Court Registry is another highly crammed area where the staff delivers its very best but under conditions which certainly to not tally with the infrastructural needs of running a Family Court Registry where the various facets of running the Family Court are all centered.

Mediation sessions are taking much longer than planned for: Mediations are being appointed much later than the prescribed legal time. The reason for this, is that the few mediators working are overloaded with work and no incentive or initiatives have been given to them to produce a better service than that which they are currently giving. It is one thing to speak about a dream: very different to put what you speak about in practice. That is why the Minister of Justice and the Parliamentary Secretary for Justice have to actually take more of an active role in the daily running of the Family Court, which cannot be stated to have been a success at all since its inauguration on December 16th, 2003.

At the end of the day the people involved do not care what the Minister of Justice believes or what the Parliamentary Secretary for Justice says, or what the Party in Government wants to do: what they want is a solution to their personal matters in a way that they can get on with their lives without all this procrastination that goes on and on with the inevitable tension and piques between the effected persons which do good to no-one!

Agenzija Appogg are over-loaded with requests for reports to be made relating to the supreme interests of minor children. We have had a number of reports where the conclusions show that not enough time was given to study a case with very often one of the parents ending-up as a victim. This is not blaming anyone but it is blaming the competent authorities involved for not seeing to it that these facts are remedied and by the same competent authorities allaying the restlessness in the psychologies of the various individuals involved that there is someone in authority who well and truly cares!

Again the concept of the Advocate for Minors has failed miserably without in anyway wanting to blame individuals. The reality is there is no infrastructure to see to it that the Lawyers appointed to see to the interests of minors have adequate facilities available to be able to carry out their work in a reasonable time because a parent not seeing his or her children even for a day can prove disastrous and when this day becomes a week, a month, and a month becomes months, considering that the new structures have been in operation for just over a year!

I could go on and on but I repeat this communication is not meant to dishearten the persons making genuine efforts to see that the Family Court works, but it is meant to give a picture which should have been given in Parliament during the review of the Ministry of Justice’s Operation and the Administration of Justice within our Courts of Justice: our Politicians relate as if it is a shame that one’s marriage has failed, as if it is a shame to have a child out of wedlock! Remedies relating to the access of the child are not easily provided for when the intimacy of that couple breaks-down!

People involved want a solution: it is not those uneffected that can speak out, it is not those who read books and propagate theories that can only speak out, but give the floor to the people who are suffering, to the people who want a solution, to the parent who has not seen his children for weeks and months-on-end, because they can find no infrastructure to assist them to speed up with what each and every individual in such cases craves for: peace, happiness and getting on with one’s life!

Yours Truly:
Emmy D. BEZZINA
Chairman: Family Rights’ Association & Chairman-ALPHA: partit politiku