Isn't it ironic? Not all that many years ago, Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino (Orlando) was married to Marlene Pullicino, who was also in the Nationalist Party, and he was the 'Green MP of the Year', turning himself into an attention-seeking hero with his stances against quarries.

Looking back, it probably wasn't the quarry or whatever to which he objected, but somebody, somewhere, against whom he had an axe to grind. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Too bad it can never be around when you need it.

Now Jeffrey Pullicino (Orlando) is a Labour stalwart who has seen a second marriage bite the dust since Marlene Pullicino left, and who from his position as chairman of the Malta Council for Science and Technology supports the Labour government, for which he voted, in its move to give a large tract of agricultural coastal land to a Jordanian man for his private business.

And Marlene Pullicino is now back to her maiden name of Marlene Farrugia and sitting on the Labour backbench, getting angrier by the day at the moves the government makes, and speaking out especially crossly about this contract with the Jordanian businessmen and the plans to give him land. Right now, she's under fire from one of the bluntest knives in Labour's kitchen drawer, Luciano Busuttil, who wrote on Facebook in his usual ungrammatical English that Marlene Farrugia should shut up or resign.

Resign from what - the Labour Party (the whip) or her seat in parliament - he didn't say. He probably doesn't really know the difference. But the point that should be made is that Farrugia is right and Busuttil is wrong. Busuttil's reasoning shows that he has little idea of what representative democracy is. He appears to believe that he is in parliament to represent the Labour Party, rather than those who voted for the Labour Party by voting for him.

Marlene Farrugia has not, as far as I can recall, lashed out at the Labour Party for doing anything which was in its electoral programme. She wouldn't do it and can't do it, because she accepted to stand for election on the basis of that programme, and people voted - at least on the face of it - for its implementation. But the two main issues on which she has spoken most angrily - the sale of Maltese citizenship and the land-grab at Zonqor Point - are not in the Labour Party's general election programme. They popped out of nowhere, pulled out of the prime minister's top hat like magic rabbits. So she is perfectly justified in questioning them and more pertinently, criticising the government for doing what it is doing in this respect.

In speaking as she is now, Farrugia voices the concerns and even the anger of her constituents. That is exactly what she is in parliament to do. The MPs who are in the wrong are those who, like Luciano Busuttil, believe their loyalty is to the prime minister and his shady deals with moneyed strangers. No, his loyalty should be to those who put him in that seat. Surely he can hear their voices, in unison, saying that they do not like what they see?

But Marlene Farrugia has said far more than that. "The issue is not about partisan politics," she said. "The issue is that people should not be tricked by the Labour Party's strong and expensive propaganda machine, which is exposing it to many obligations which then force it to do what it does not wish, working blindly in favour of the financially well off and against families who struggle to make ends meet."

Farrugia is talking about corruption here, without giving it its proper name. The Labour Party's propaganda machine, she says, is "expensive". That expensive machine "exposes it to many obligations". Those obligations "force the Labour Party to do what it does not wish". It ends up having to "work in favour of the rich".

Facebook and other internet forums have become Marlene Farrugia's platform outside parliament. She can't speak on the Labour Party's broadcast media, she says, because she is not allowed to do so. She is never "invited" to discussion shows. Meanwhile, her ex-husband Jeffrey Pullicino, despite not being a Labour Party official, is a near-permanent fixture on the party's television station. That's the madness of the situation.

Too much of Malta's coast in that area has "already been buried under factories and so-called investment", she wrote, and "with the sale of Enemalta, God knows how many more sites have been transferred to the Chinese shareholders, and yet we do not know what will happen to them."

I have to say it and I'll say it gladly: Marlene Farrugia is doing a far better job of representing her constituents than Luciano Busuttil, who thinks she should shut up (well, she is a woman, after all) is doing, and certainly a whole lot better than her ex-husband - who betrayed his constituents so badly in his own personal interests - ever did.

Not bad, I would say, for a mother. Or should that be a mother of three?

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