We sat and waited for it to come last Wednesday, right up to 11.15pm, but it was not to be.
For nine whole hours, Censu Galea as Chairman of Committee (and Deputy Speaker), Edward Scicluna and Mario de Marco batted clause by clause the long, 140-something clause Bill to Implement the Budget Measures until they probably could see no more.
The House sitting was due to end at around 9pm but the going was so laborious that, in the end, word went around that there would be no voting that night, so probably all the other MPs went home, leaving those three to battle it out.
The sitting was thus adjourned to next Wednesday, which happens to be 1 April – all references to April Fools’ Day being, of course, coincidental.
Why am I going on so about a simple House Committee meeting? Because, although the conditional is obligatory here because the powers-that-be may change everything – and they have a track record of doing so – Wednesday could be the last sitting of the House in the Palace before the it moves to its new site.
It will be the end of a rather uncomfortable cohabitation between the House of Representatives, or whatever name it has had over the past 100 years (since 1921), and the Head of State or Representative, Governor-General or President.
I do not think it was ever planned that Parliament was to remain in the Palace all this time, but I do think that, for a long time, it was kept there so that it could be controlled better.
Those were the years when Constitutions were often granted but equally often taken away and direct rule by the Colonial government had a funny way of going away and coming back, right up until 1958.
And in-between there was, of course, the War during which no one had any time to think of Parliament being anywhere else. Parliament was kept indoors because it was, in many ways, a security threat, as witness the fiery patriotic speech by Sir Ugo Mifsud, cut down by a heart attack as he was attacking the British government’s intention to deport key Maltese to Africa because they were suspected of Italian sympathies.
After the war, the House continued to meet in the Tapestry Chamber (including the episode in which an MP – no, not Dom Mintoff as is sometimes whispered – threw an inkwell at another MP, missed him and hit the Gobelin tapestry behind him).
When Malta became independent in 1964, it did not cross George Borg Olivier’s mind, and probably no one else’s either, that a new, self-respecting state should not allow its House of Representatives to remain, like an unwanted lodger, in the Palace of the Governor-General at first, and the Maltese Head of State subsequently.
In the 1970s, Dom Mintoff did take some steps to reinforce the sovereignty of Parliament through doing away with the Palace Armoury which, for centuries, had been in the long hall at the back and instead converting it to a new House.
Now it will be farewell to all that. I do not intend to write about the new Parliament today but, for sure, the MPs will come to regret losing those acres of space that the Richard England House affords them when they move to the crammed Piano House later.
It will be farewell to so many small and big adjustments, most of them unconscious which, with the passage of time, have grown to be habits if not also acquired rights and privileges.
It is farewell to the hidey-holes that ministers call their offices, small poky rooms, many times accessed by a steep staircase carved out of the walls.
It is farewell to committee rooms situated in completely uncongenial surroundings, such as the House Business Committee room in what used to be the Grand Master’s bedroom, or the Public Accounts Committee room in a room with most Popes of the 18th century on the walls, and frescoes telling the history of the Order continuing on to the next rooms which are accessible to the public but not part of the area reserved for Parliament.
It is farewell to the incomparable beauty of the Grand Master’s personal chapel adorned with priceless frescoes by Paladini which, to my knowledge, only Speaker Michael Frendo used to use for the House Business meetings and which I myself saw many times used as a place for brewing up coffee or tea (with a danger to the recently-restored Paladini frescoes).
It is farewell, too, to a brand new committee room, down at ground floor level (where the Grand Master’s stables used to be and, in my time the linotypists tapping away at the Government Gazette) which has never ever been used.
It is farewell to a veritable warren of passages, stairs, rooms – even at the back of the Hall where in other times (and with a very different technology) I would sit and cover an entire sitting many times on my own and sometimes almost forgotten there.
Most of all, it is farewell to the numerous historic and stormy sittings held there, to so many speeches made, to some memorable and never forgotten sittings like the last months of the Gonzi administration and the six-hour long Mintoff speech in the summer of 1998.
For all that it was a lodger, the House saw some memorable sights. I would not include the state occasions with the Strangers Gallery full of guests, because state occasions, in Malta at least, are stodgy and stale – you get to meet the same people over and over again and the back-biting is pervasive. And the food is usually indigestible.
Now, for a while, there will be an air of bereavement with so many empty spaces instead of the usual bustle. It is like a lodger leaving after being part of the household for many long years.
There is still the long process of moving all the archives to the new location – certainly not an easy job. What happens afterwards is still not clear, not clear at all. The basic concept, as I remember it, was for the Palace to be restored to its original glory, but exactly which glory are we talking about? The glory of the times of the Order – considering that most of the art treasures have been pillaged, mostly by the British. Or should the period under the British Crown be forgotten? Despite, as said, the terrible depredations that were suffered.
Even more crucially, who should be in charge?
There is much to say for the Palace being handed over to a body such as Heritage Malta to restore it to its former glory and keep it as the nation’s best historic site rather than to allow each successive President to fashion the Palace as he or she sees fit.
The rot, as I see it, started with these last two Presidencies, especially in George Abela’s time and increasingly now, with commercial use being made of the San Anton private gardens – always with the Community Chest Fund being brought in to absolve everything.
I have seen a DVD about the Quirinale Palace in Rome which explains in great detail how every state room developed when the palace was the residence of the Popes and was restored in later years. Essentially, the Palace is the Palace and no President would ever dream of doing things on his own.
Here, on the contrary, nothing is established and nothing is clear. It was said, years ago, that when the Parliament leaves, Judge Giovanni Bonello would take over and supervise the restoration of the building, but nothing has been heard of this for a long, long time.
It has also been said that the aim and intention will be to restore the building to its position as the most important historic building in Malta but, as I will explain next week, I have come to be quite sceptical about whether or not this is what will be done.
[email protected]