Last Wednesday, the country was geared up for what had been billed as the great parliamentary energy debate. Following months of speculation on the government's energy sector plans, the trading of blows between the government and the Opposition, the country was primed for some major announcements or developments.

Sadly, nothing of the sort emerged, save for the announcements that the BWSC plant will be converted to gas come June and that petrol prices are set to fall once the government's current hedging agreements expire. But even follow-up questions sent to the energy ministry by this newspaper about when those hedging agreements are actually due to expire remained unanswered and unacknowledged this week.

What last Wednesday's debate amounted to, in the end, was a government that regurgitated the same old lines the country has been hearing for far too long now.  And the opposition repeatedly attacked the government's transparency pledges and the lack of information made available for the debate time and time again.

But then again, debating a deal of the magnitude of the Enemalta-Shanghai Electric Power agreement, the Electrogas agreement, the government's fuel hedging policy and all that comes with these topics can hardly be done with one of the parties not being fully cognisant of the details and with the other party apparently intent at all costs on obfuscating the real issues at hand.

Frankly, we are surprised that the Opposition consented to hold the debate at all in the absence of any nitty-gritty details of the government's energy sector dealings.

How on earth can the Opposition be expected to debate the deal, the biggest the country has ever seen in the energy minister's words, without being privy to all the details?

To even suggest that Parliament, the nation's highest institution, should debate an agreement of this importance and magnitude in such a way is ludicrous, to say the least. The suggestion in itself disrespects the very fundamentals of a parliamentary democracy.

But that is precisely what the government has done. Exactly how the Opposition was to be expected to carry out an informed debate, which is, after all, the very essence of a parliamentary democracy, without knowing the details of the agreements being debated defies belief.

And in the process, the government has not only whitewashed the Shanghai and other energy deals it has struck, but it has also whitewashed Parliament itself. This should clearly be unacceptable to the citizens of this country who are represented in Parliament.

The Opposition said the fact that the government wanted to hold the debate without publishing the documents related to that debate contrasted with the administration's claims of aiming to be the most transparent in history. Since the agreement was signed in December, the Opposition has repeatedly called on the government to publish all relevant details before the issue is debated in Parliament. This has not been done, much to the Opposition's consternation. And it is quite right.

The Opposition had said it had no problem if certain commercially sensitive details in the contracts are not published, which gave the government considerable leeway to actually publish the agreements. How could the Opposition have scrutinised the agreements without being in possession of the relevant documents? The only thing the Opposition had available to scrutinise, in fact, were the government's own statements and the Shanghai agreement, which, truth be told, was no more than a Memorandum of Understanding, which lacked several pertinent details that our parliamentarians should have debated.

The Opposition could not have been expected to debate the already multifaceted energy sector, which has had several new facets added to it by this government, without having had the chance to analyse its details, which is where, it is said, the devil lies.

Is the Opposition, and for that matter the people themselves, expected to simply take anything the government says at face value without question, and turn a parliamentary debate into a mere rubber stamping exercise for the government of the day?

One can only wonder what a Labour Party in opposition would have made of such behaviour from a Nationalist Party in government. If there is nothing to hide, the government should have, in the interest of transparency and proper parliamentary process, published the full details of all the agreements and the supporting documents as the Opposition had demanded.

Anything short of that makes a mockery of the country's parliamentary process. The debate on the future of Enemalta and the country's crucial energy sector simply should not have been held amid an information blackout; the country deserves better than that from its Parliament.

Transparency and the root and branch reform of the energy sector were the hallmarks of this government's election campaign but the government has so far kept the energy reform under a thick veil of secrecy and its transparency pledge has, in the process, been left by the wayside.