The widespread confusion about whether Pullicino Orlando should or shouldn’t resign, whether he may be obliged to do so and by whom or what, only points to the absolute dearth of civic education in our schools and university. While the so-called man-in-the-street can be forgiven for not knowing certain things or not grasping certain concepts, it is unforgivable that people who have been part and parcel of political life should manifest such a gross misunderstanding of basic democratic tenets, a poor handle on the separation of powers, and near-complete ignorance of the constitutional role of a member of Parliament, except in the narrowest legal sense. Above and beyond my column last Thursday (www.independent.com.mt – Menu bar: Archive – 19 March – MPs are answerable only to their constituents), here are some further points that need to be made.

If the Nationalist Party is so upset with the behaviour of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, then the Nationalist Party has a choice of only two roads open to it: to demand his resignation from the party, or to kick him out. The Nationalist Party cannot demand that he resign his seat as an MP, because seats in Parliament are not in the gift of political parties and the Constitution protects individual MPs from any such depredations. In fact, the Constitution does not even consider the existence of political parties, except when discussing the mechanisms that come into play when a party gains a minority of votes and a majority of seats. As far as the Constitution is concerned, there is no such thing as a Nationalist MP or a Labour MP. There are only MPs.

The reason that some elements within the Nationalist Party are working behind the scenes for Pullicino Orlando’s resignation from Parliament rather than from the party – even though the Nationalist Party is entitled only to demand the latter – is obvious. They want to rid themselves of Pullicino Orlando while keeping his seat for the party and maintaining its majority in Parliament, and hence, the government. They do not want Pullicino Orlando to resign from the party. In fact, they are probably delirious with fear that he might, in which case I must ask why they are going out of their way to claim their pound of flesh and back him up against the wall. If he resigns from the party he automatically becomes an independent MP. Resignation from the party does not equate with resignation from Parliament. MPs who resign from the party keep their seats, because their seats are not dependent on the party, despite their being elected on the party ticket. The Constitution doesn’t give a flying monkey’s about political parties, except where spelling out the mechanism for the adjustment of seats.

So if Pullicino Orlando resigns from the party, which is what the party should ask him to do if it is so deeply upset, the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party will have equal numbers of seats, with Pullicino Orlando in the middle playing the role that Harry Vassallo and Arnold Cassola so coveted.

That is one reason why I cannot, for the life of me, understand why some elements in the Nationalist Party are insisting on escalating the matter and attempting to create public hysteria about this case, aided and abetted by the Labour Party and AD. Nor can I understand why newspaper columnists and other commentators who should know better are insisting that Pullicino Orlando ‘should do the right thing and go’, when he does not represent their interests in Parliament, nor is he their MP.

* * *

All efforts by some elements within the Nationalist Party to force Pullicino Orlando to vacate his seat drive right against our particular form of representative democracy, which is rooted in individual MPs and not in political parties, as spelled out in our Constitution. That seat does not belong to the Nationalist Party. It belongs to Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.

I have to repeat that in our system of representative democracy, MPs are answerable only to their constituents – or more precisely, to those who elect them. Absolutely nobody has the right to remove, or to work for the removal of, an MP except those who voted for him. This happens at a general election, when they might decide not to vote for him again. Absolutely no one else has the right to interfere: not the Prime Minister, not the Nationalist Party, not the Labour Party, not the constituents of other districts, and certainly not Alternattiva Demokratika, newspaper columnists, opinion pollsters, or whatever is currently masquerading as public opinion. Our Constitution protects MPs against precisely this kind of baying of the mob, and rightly so. It’s called democracy, as opposed to Stalinism.

The idea that an MP can be forced or ‘persuaded’ to resign because he has done something that sectors of society other than his constituents do not like or object to is so profoundly undemocratic – so appalling – that I regard it with horror. If we start down that road, where will it all end?

* * *

I find it hard to believe that the Prime Minister is behind all this. As a pragmatist with a very sharp mind, he will have a firm grasp on the dangerous ramifications of this course of action. His office has already issued a statement pointing out that the seats of Members of Parliament are a matter on which the electorate decides. But quite apart from the democratic aspects, he will also know that embarking on such a high-risk strategy – trying to force an MP to resign by bringing out the baying mob and fanning the flames of ‘public anger’ – is extremely irresponsible. The odds are that both the government and the Nationalist Party will end up hoist by their own petard.

The Nationalist Party needs Pullicino Orlando’s seat. And because Pullicino Orlando’s seat comes with Pullicino Orlando attached to it, it follows that they need him too. The current attempt at trying to keep Pullicino Orlando’s seat without Pullicino Orlando in it is a democratic non-starter. From a practical point of view, it is stupidly dangerous in terms of strategy. It would have been insane even for the Nationalist Party to permit the escalation of this matter without applying damage management. To watch the Nationalist Party escalating the issue itself, and deliberately so, leaves me bug-eyed in consternation.

The Prime Minister should demand, forcefully, that his underlings and minions stop this nonsense at once. In the interest of all that is commonsense and democracy, the Pullicino Orlando case should be investigated, calmly and without political pressure, by the police. Then if it reaches that stage, it should be decided upon, also calmly and without political pressure, by the courts. Do people understand what the separation of powers means, and what it is there for? I am beginning to doubt it.

* * *

The Prime Minister is not the sort to stamp his little feet because he has Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando on his side of the House and doesn’t want him there. He is the sort to deal with it. Over the course of the election campaign, he dealt smilingly with the fractious behaviour of a thousand whiners and whingers threatening him with their vote. I am pretty sure he can cope with this situation. Otherwise, what he is doing (if he is doing it, which I doubt) is exactly what Sant did in the PBS studios: calling for the removal by unorthodox means of the upsetting presence of a fellow MP.

In situations like this, we must ask ourselves: who gains? (Please don’t all write in at once with the Latin maxim.) The answer to this question is simple: those who have most to gain by the removal of Pullicino Orlando are the Nationalist candidates on his districts who were not elected. In the district where I vote, these include two candidates whom I made a point of not voting for: Michael Asciak of Opus Dei and Tony Abela tar-Rabat. I would be very cross indeed if the MP for whom I did vote were forced to resign only to be replaced by somebody for whom I specifically did not vote, and for valid reasons.

If the constituents of the district where I live voted for Pullicino Orlando, and not for X or Y, then our wishes have to be respected, including by Pullicino Orlando. He would not be justified in resigning because he has no way of knowing whether those who put him in that seat to represent them wish him to go away and be replaced by somebody for whom they did not vote.

* * *

It is a serious business indeed when a political party brings its machine to bear, whipping up public opinion, against an MP it wishes to rid itself of while keeping his seat. It is the kind of thing one might have expected of Dom Mintoff. It is only if Pullicino Orlando is convicted by the courts of a crime that carries a sentence of more than one year in prison that we can speak of removing him from Parliament – and then it is in the hands of the Speaker of the House, and not of the Prime Minister.

I was informed in terse terms that “lying to the Prime Minister” is a resignation matter. Yes, of course it is, I replied – and that’s exactly why the Prime Minister should ask Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando to resign from the Nationalist Party if he understands that he has been lied to. On the other hand, nobody is obliged to resign their seat in Parliament because they “lied to the Prime Minister”, and no Prime Minister has the right to expect or request their resignation. Pullicino Orlando’s constituents, for the sake of argument, might be indifferent to his behaviour; they might excuse it, forgive it, or even like it, for all we know. There is no accounting for taste. After all, several thousand people voted for Jesmond Mugliett and for Franco Debono.

There was a frozen silence, as expected, given that the people who are arguing like this don’t like having it pointed out to them that a party leader who feels abused by a party member can only ask for that party member’s resignation from the party, and not from Parliament.

* * *

There’s something else, too, which is confusing people. When the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition asked the Police Commissioner to investigate this case, they did so as ordinary citizens. It was no different to my going up to the Police Commissioner and asking for an investigation. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition has a specific, still less superior, role to play in asking for investigations into alleged cases of corruption. They are taken more seriously by the Police Commissioner, perhaps, but that is entirely up to his own discretion. They are certainly not taken more seriously by the law.

This particular fiction was created by the behaviour of Lawrence Gonzi and Alfred Sant in the last week of the election campaign. Both of them – perhaps unintentionally – created the impression that they were demanding an investigation in their respective roles as Prime Minister and Opposition Leader. Alfred Sant went one further by dragging the press along and creating a circus.

Now that the matter is with the police, it is out of the Prime Minister’s hands. What am I saying? It has always been out of the Prime Minister’s hands, because we do not live in a country where the Prime Minister can cross the boundaries that separate the powers. We did so once, yes, but that was in the 1970s and the early to mid-1980s. If the case reaches the courts, and the courts take a decision which makes Pullicino Orlando’s seat untenable in terms of article 55 of the Constitution of Malta, it is the Speaker of the House, and not the Prime Minister, who must then act to have him removed.

I cannot repeat often enough that the Prime Minister has no role at all to play in a situation like this. Nor should he have such a role, as we cannot have a situation in which MPs – who represent those who voted for them and not the political parties – are forced out by party leaders who don’t like them.

If a prime minister wants to rid himself of an MP when he has a one-seat majority in parliament, his only choice is to do what Sant did in 1998, and call a snap election. Sant tried to rid himself of Mintoff, and instead the country rid itself of Sant. A prime minister is referred to as the primus inter pares – or first among equals – for the simple reason that, in parliamentary terms and in terms of our Constitution, this is precisely what he is.

In parliament, he has no Constitutional status greater than that of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando. Both are MPs.

By trying to force the resignation of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, the Nationalist Party is making itself a hostage to fortune. Does it seriously imagine that over the course of the next five years, not one of its other 33 MPs (I leave the prime minister out of this because I consider him to be beyond reproach) will give cause for concern or even for scandal? Unless it is going to operate a system of two weights and two measures, it will then have to try forcing those other trouble-makers to resign, too. That should be fun – five whole years of musical chairs.

But we have a system of two weights and two measures already. Jesmond Mugliett, despite giving repeated cause for scandal through his various ministerial responsibilities and almost certainly being responsible for much of the voter haemorrhage suffered by the Nationalist Party in the last couple of years, was not even made to resign from his Cabinet post. Now a demand for the resignation of a Cabinet minister is an entirely different kettle of fish, because a minister is part of the executive. For all the reasons I have outlined here, asking Mugliett to resign his parliamentary seat didn’t even cross the remoter regions of the government’s mind. But he should have certainly been made to resign as minister, and the Prime Minister paid the price at the polls for not doing so. Why? Because people understood that he could have removed him and didn’t – unlike with Pullicino Orlando and his seat in Parliament.

It was the same with John Dalli, who has now been returned to the fold. When there were accusations against him, he was asked to resign his Cabinet position. Nobody said anything about resigning his parliamentary seat – again, for all the reasons I have outlined here. Pullicino Orlando doesn’t have a ministerial post to resign. Not being given one, and having the baying hounds put on his heels, is apparently not enough punishment – so they are going after his seat as well.

This is exactly the kind of anti-democratic thinking and behaviour I fought the Labour Party about. I am not going to tolerate for one minute any attempt at the forced removal of my MP without having my approval sought and obtained. The next opportunity for that is at the polls in 2013. I have my own views about his behaviour, but I object on principle to being told that I cannot be represented by the person I chose to represent me. I object most strenuously to having this decision made over my head and in blatant defiance of my wishes as expressed at the polls. Whether Pullicino Orlando stays or goes is something that we decide, his constituents, and not something that is decided for us by others, none of whose business it is. How dare anyone suggest otherwise?

* * *

In this general election, the Nationalist Party included in its candidate list several individuals with a large neon sign above their heads that said “Trouble”. Some of them have a history of shady deals. Others are on the make. A couple define wrong and right as what is wrong and right for them. One of them has some question marks hanging over his head when it comes to – how shall it put it? – straight dealing. I was very cross at his inclusion in the list because I believe that electors should know what they are voting for, and if this man was being put forward by Lawrence Gonzi and the family values party, people who weren’t in the know would assume that he was OK.

So according to the Nationalist Party’s scale of values, it is all right for a man to lie to his wife but lying to the party boss is a beheading offence. Well, I’m sorry, but I beg to differ. Give me the man who lies to the boss any day over the man who cheats on his wife while she’s having a baby. And I’m sure that every woman in this country will say the same, and some men too. Fortunately, the candidate in question was not elected. But if he were elected, we would have observed the delicious irony of this confirmed liar and cheat being allowed to watch from the comfort of his parliamentary seat the hounding of another MP who had the audacity to “lie to the boss”.

The Nationalist Party should vet its candidates before the general election. Afterwards, if those candidates are elected, there is nothing that can be done: tough, but true.

* * *

Nowhere in this case has there been any suggestion that Pullicino Orlando paid to get what he wanted. That’s corruption. Hitting the telephones to talk to people is not corruption. It is undue influence, and there are no legal sanctions against it – only disciplinary procedures, and only against the civil servants or public officers who give into it. When I hear the pseudo-scandalised tones of those on board the x’ gharukaza train (“he phoned people!”), I want to give up, get out of this well with its tunnel-vision people, and take a nice, long sabbatical in Manhattan.

If we are going to start criminally investigating MPs and forcing them to resign for lobbying government departments and public service authorities, we had better get the other 66 MPs in line and start now. Again, I leave out Gonzi and I even leave out Sant. MPs lobby for their constituents all the time. It’s their job. It’s what they’re paid to do, in case we forget this. They cross the line when they bring undue influence to bear, or when they lobby for themselves. Pullicino Orlando wasn’t the only one to have been (allegedly) doing this. He was the only one to get caught. And let’s be honest, the only reason he is being made to pay such a high price, and in public too, is because he snagged the progress of the campaign in the last week, and has been blamed for the loss of votes (while the votes he pulled in with that stunt in the PBS studios were, of course, not acknowledged).

I really can’t stand any mealy-mouthed hypocrisy of this nature. Our Parliament is jam-packed with seedy characters on both sides of the House – people who are already trouble or who have great potential for creating trouble over the next five years. Let’s get some sense of perspective on this one. And let’s remember that we are living in a democratic country with a clear delineation between the powers and a Constitution that safeguards MPs against the depredations of their political masters or “public opinion”.

And let us above all remember that “public opinion” is often little more than the baying of the mob. Decisions taken in haste and panic to please that baying mob and to protect the ruler from its anger translate into the commission of grave injustices – most infamously on that day in Biblical history that led to the feast we are commemorating today, which began with the mob’s cry to crucify a scapegoat, and a decision taken to appease the mob in defiance of the law.

And lest anyone rush forwards to claim otherwise, I would have written exactly the same way if the case involved an MP for whom I did not vote, including Opposition MPs. There are some very important principles at stake here, and those who do not recognise this would have been more at home in the days when the ruler shouted “Off with his head” and the underlings rushed to do his bidding.

Daphne Caruana Galizia also writes a column for The Malta Independent on Thursday (www.independent.com.mt). Her blog is at www.daphnecaruanagalizia. com