It is a worrisome situation when the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the person tasked with running the state’s highest institution, appears to have become the government’s gatekeeper in chief.

When the Opposition’s former leader and current spokesperson for good governance, quite legitimately given the severity of the situation and the associated national interest, asked a Parliamentary Question about the Office of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, he was summarily stopped dead in his tracks by the Speaker of the House.

The question was a simple one that deserves a simple answer: does the Office of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff hold an account at Pilatus Bank or in Dubai?

These questions are anything but gratuitous, they are in the national interest in the wake of the manifold revelations that have been published and they are also in the public record thanks to the efforts of this newspaper and others.

Busuttil is not asking if Schembri holds an account at HSBC or at BOV, nor is he asking if Schembri holds a bank account in London or in New York. He is asking about Pilatus and Dubai, where the connection to Schembri and Minister Konrad Mizzi has been a focal point since those damning Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit reports, which the authorities sought to bury, were leaked so many months ago.

As such, Busuttil’s questions are specifically pointed: they concern some very serious issues surrounding the government, and they are questions that, as a representative of the people, Busuttil was perfectly within his rights to have asked.

But instead of allowing the question to be asked, the Speaker ruled against Busuttil and denied him permission to ask the pertinent PQs. The Speaker referred to established procedure in the UK House of Commons and insisted that if he were to allow Busuttil to continue with the line of questioning he would be going against his duty to ensure that order is kept in the House. He explained that PQs directed at ministers should specifically relate to their responsibilities and not be based upon media reports.

There are so many things wrong with the judgement that the mind boggles.

Firstly, does the Speaker of Malta’s House of Representatives need to refer to established procedure in the UK House of Commons? Malta has not been a British colony for several decades now.

Even so, has the UK ever had a Prime Minister’s chief of staff embroiled in allegations such as these?

Furthermore, there have been at least scores of instances in which PQs have been based on media reports that were certainly less grounded in fact than those to which the Speaker is referring to in this case.

Moreover, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff and especially his actions since being placed in that position, are very much the responsibility of the Prime Minister himself.

And this begs the question as to whether along with the police, the FIAU, the Malta Financial Services Authority and practically every other institution tasked with upholding the rule of law in this country – Parliament itself has also been captured by the government.

And, after all that has come to pass as concerns these suspected bank accounts, is the question Busuttil is asking not the very epitome of the national interest, and one that an MP is duty bound to ask, and is it not a question which deserves to be answered?

Busutill is appealing the ruling – an appeal which said was being dedicated to Daphne Caruana Galizia ‘who paid the ultimate price for her crusade against corruption and abuse of power in Malta’.

It is hoped that the appeal is successful as the Speaker’s original decision can only be construed as a highly partisan one, and one in which the Speaker of the House had chosen to ignore his duty to the nation in favour of serving as the government’s gatekeeper.