MP asks if minister interviewed people deployed to the Security Service

Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi asked today whether Home Affairs Minister Emanuel Mallia had interviewed policemen before they were transferred to the Security Service. Speaking in Parliament on the adjournment, Dr Azzopardi asked if it was  true that people were interviewed by the minister and his chief of staff before being deployed to the Security Service. Since when, he asked, were politicians involved in this way? To whom was the loyalty of these Security Service people: the law, the country, the people, the minister or the party? Under the PN government,he said, no minister ever involved himself in the Security Service in this way. Political involvement was serious because of the powers which the members of the Security Service had. He hoped, Dr Azzopardi said, that the Security Service would be guided only by the law and there was a viable explanation for what he had spoken about. Earlier, he said that the Opposition was disappointed and angry at the way matters were developing in the police and the AFM.The Labour government had promised that there would not be injustices and there would be no 'us and them'. But in the army one could see a return of the sort of partisan...