AND
WHY DIDN’T THE RGP ENFORCE THE LAW?
My
article today is not political but legal. It begs two questions: should the
former Chief Minister Peter Caruana be prosecuted for breaking the 1991 Nature
Protection Act? And, why didn’t the Royal Gibraltar Police enforce that law
from 1997 until the present GSLP Liberal Government was elected to office last
November?
Before
1991 Gibraltar was in a state of catch-up with the environmental legislation in
the UK and wider Europe. However that year the GSLP Government presented the
Nature Protection Act before the Rock’s parliament. It was then duly passed in
to law and has been the law of Gibraltar ever since.
With
regards to fishing the law specifically prohibits the use of seine
and gill nets in British Gibraltar Territorial Waters. Seabed raking and the
use of artificial lights for attracting fish are also illegal under the
aforementioned Act. These methods,
including drift nets as well as long lines, are used by Spanish fishermen in our
waters.
Between 1991 and 1997 the Act was enforced by the Royal Gibraltar
Police. While some fishing occurred,
this was without sanction and the Police effected arrests and prosecutions on a
number of occasions. It was following such an arrest, a campaign was started by
Spanish fishermen to press the Gibraltar Government to allow them to fish. In 1999, after the fishermen blockaded the
Gibraltar frontier, a ‘Joint Understanding’ was accepted by the fishing
federations of the border town of La Línea as well as Algeciras across the bay
and the then Chief Minister Peter Caruana. It allowed Spanish fishing vessels
to fish in Gibraltar’s waters using methods illegal under the Nature Protection
Act 1991.
However this document, if that is what it was, was illegal because it
contravened the 1991 Nature Protection Act. It would have been very simply for
Caruana to have legalised what he had agreed with the fishermen. As he assures
us he had them biting out of his hand all he had to do was to tell them to have
patience whilst he took an amendment to the 1991 Nature Protection Act to the
then House of Assembly for approval. Once that process had been done the accord
would have become part of Gibraltar’s law.
Yet Caruana failed to do that. Either he decided to ignore the House out of
shere arrogance or rather than the fishermen eating out of his hand like tame
Koi Carp they had held him over a fish barrel. Hence he knew that revealing the
terms of the agreement would have caused outrage in Gibraltar and maybe against
that scenario he could not count on the support of his GSD team. Who knows?
Well Caruana does!
The Chief Minister Fabian Picardo has made it clear to all who will listen
that neither he nor his government have any power over the actions of the RGP.
Indeed our Minister for the Environment, Dr John Cortes, reinforced that stance
in a recent interview with me for the London Progressive Journal on the
environmental implications of the current situation.
That being the case the Royal Gibraltar Police also have questions to
answer. I am fully aware that the front line officers bravely enforced the Act
before 1997 and have been so doing again in recent weeks. Yet what of the Commissioner?
Why did he decide not to enforce the law of Gibraltar between 1998 and the
former Chief Minister Peter Caruana leaving office? Was he ordered not to do so
by Caruana who has no control of the force? Or was he ordered not to do so by
the Convent in contravention of the law passed by Gibraltar’s parliament. We
need to know.
If I park my car illegally in Gibraltar it is towed away and I am fined
according to the law. If I walk down Main Street and punch a passerby on the
nose I will be arrested by the RGP and brought to trial. If I walk in to a bank
and attempt to rob it I will be bundled away in a police car and find myself before
a judge: if found guilty I am sent to jail.
So finally to Peter Caruana himself. We are all equal in the eyes of the
law so if we break the laws of Gibraltar it is logical we end up in court. As
the former Chief Minister seemingly broke the law of Gibraltar by reaching an
accord with the Spanish fishermen, which he then imposed over the 1991 Nature
Protection Act that was and still is the law of Gibraltar, what sanction will
be imposed?
As I said at the start of this article this is not a political matter it is
a legal one. In theory as Peter Caruana appears to have broken the law of
Gibraltar as well as possibly influencing others not to enforce the law of
Gibraltar then this is a matter that should be heard and ruled on in the courts
of Gibraltar. Unless of course there is one law for the hoi polloi and another
for former Chief Ministers.
