University draws a line around private work

According to Lovin Malta, Cassola lodged the complaint after Momentum published the survey questions and challenged the ethics of the exercise. The survey had been carried out by Marmarà’s company, Sagalytics, and commissioned by Yorgen Fenech’s uncle Ray. Cassola alleged that Marmarà had undermined the university’s good standing by carrying out the survey and by misrepresenting who was behind it.

In an excerpt from the investigation that Cassola himself published, Valenzia argued that the survey was carried out by Marmarà’s company rather than by Marmarà personally. That distinction did the heavy lifting. Because the work was treated as private rather than academic, Lovin Malta reported, the university found that ethics consent was not required.

That is a narrow institutional answer to a broad public controversy. It does not tell you whether the survey was wise, or decent, or corrosive. It tells you the university considered the relevant question to be jurisdiction. If the work belonged to a separate legal entity, the university could decline to treat it as its own affair.

On paper, that is tidy enough. In Malta, it is rarely so tidy in public life. A company can be distinct from a lecturer; a lecturer’s public reputation is not so easily split in two. People do not encounter these matters as corporate diagrams. They see a well-known university statistician attached to a politically explosive survey and draw their conclusions from there.

Marmarà said the complaint’s conclusions found that the accusations were not sustained by the facts or evidence. He also said the judge emeritus criticised the “serious or offensive personal accusations” made against him and insisted that Cassola should retract the language and apologise for the damage caused.

Lovin Malta reported that Cassola had called Marmarà a “liar” and a “filthy crook” after the survey questions emerged. Marmarà replied that his professional work should be judged on facts and evidence, not allegations and personal attacks.

The university’s decision settles the complaint before it. It also leaves in place a fairly clear principle: when a lecturer’s controversial work is routed through a private company, the institution may regard the matter as outside its ethics framework.