The opening of the new Parliament was the Speaker’s red-letter day. I will not go into the ceremony, even if, I consider the military parades out of place during such occasions. They are only reminiscent of a colonial past.

Yet there were two things which attracted my attention. The first was the President’s discourse, which I found superb, to the point and meaningful. The second point is the role of the Speaker. Today, I wish to focus my attention on the incumbent, Dr Anglu Farrugia.

One of the big surprise choices made by Dr Joseph Muscat was the appointment of Dr Anglu Farrugia as Speaker of the House of Representatives. This because it came after the bitter clash that we all witnessed between the two men prior to the 2013 general election whena Machiavellian campaign against Dr Farrugia was set into motion. There was a strong movement within Labour to kick him out because he represented the old guard of Labour politics. The media build-up to demonize him was so successful that it became extremely easy for Dr Muscat to pull the rug from under Dr Farrugia’s feet.

Despite all the ridicule and the smear campaign that Dr Farrugia had to endure, he made a comeback and is proving to be an efficient managerand a good Speaker. He has succeeded in dispelling all political scepticism that was built around his personaand is giving an answer to all those who thought that he would make an appalling minister. Not only is he proving to be an efficient Speaker but he has slowly succeeded in gaining the respect of both sides of the House.

One has to give credit to the previous administration for the bold decision of giving parliament its own independent seat. Special thanks should go to Dr Lawrence Gonzi. He was the Prime Minister who moved from talk to action. Today, Dr Lawrence Gonzi is credited as being the first Speaker to have made the most important reforms in our parliamentary system. He was the one who introduced House Committees to expedite parliamentary bureaucracy. With Dr Gonzi’s appointment, the Speaker ceased to behumiliated in the house – as had happened to his predecessor Dr Jimmy Farrugia. This seat started to acquire its deserved respect from the two sides of parliament and the Prime Minister stopped running the show in Parliament, as was the casein Dom Mintoff’s time.

Yet, giving autonomy to Parliament is not enough. The head of this institution, that is, the Speaker of the House, has a responsibility to bear. Dr Anglu Farrugia is proving worthy of his predecessors.

First he took the bold decision to resign from the Labour Party for the time being, that is, while he is Speaker. Such a decision reminds me of Dr CensuTabone. He was the first politician to resign from his party after being given an institutional appointment, in his case, after being appointed President of Malta. Such bold moves by our politicians are only to be commended. Then there isanother positive decision taken by Farrugia that needs to be noted. He is the first Speaker to have taken on this role as a full time job.  Besides having more time at his disposal so that he can follow Parliamentary matters better, itrelieves him from being present in court. Thus he has avoided an institutional clash with the third pillar of our country’s institutions, that is, the Court of laws. This means that he has strengthened the Speaker’s role as the head of the executive body in Malta.

While in Malta, we normally follow British Parliamentary praxis, the fact that we are now part of the European Union, necessitates that westart looking at other European parliaments. In Europe, the head of parliament is considered as the President of the Assembly. This follows the French praxis, established during the revolutionary period following 1789. Guido de Marco was one of those members of Parliament who refused to address the chair as Mr. Speaker. As a convinced Europeanist, he always addressed the chair as Mr or Madame President.

The opening of this new seat is another step in the long history of our Parliament, which can be tracedas far back as 1895. Perhaps, very few today know that the idea for the setting up of a Maltese Parliament came from a priest from Senglea, Ignazio  Panzavecchia. While at the end of the nineteenth century,the main Maltese political leaders were insisting on improving the Maltese constitution given to us by the Imperial powers in 1887, Panzavecchia came up with two innovative ideas. First, he set up his own political party, which he called “Partito Popolare” a political nomenclature that today has lost much of its original meaning. Secondly, he asked and favoured the granting of self-government to Malta. Thus, he was demanding the setting up of a parliament, as we understand it today.

While I am convinced that Anglu Farrugia is doing his best to make our Parliament a space for everyone and wants to increase the respect of the people towards this institution, our politicians too, from both sides of Parliament, should alsowork to make this institution respectable in the eyes of the Maltese.