The Opposition MP was fuming, but careful. Careful to speak to me where no one could see us, on the winding stairs of The Palace, during a morning sitting last week.

“There is no Opposition left. There’s just the government.”

I was to see how right that MP was the next day when, for a whole hour, MPs voted on no fewer than four ministries – plus further votes on the Consolidated Fund and the Appropriations Bill.

Voted, I said? Well, sort of. Voted in the sense that they were all locked in the Chamber, on the Speaker’s orders, and the clerk rolled off the names of all MPs. Surprise, surprise: in a House where majority and minority are separated by one single vote, two Opposition MPs did not even turn up.

All that the MPs had to do was to stay in their seats and be counted as being for or against. Not for them tramping up and depositing their vote in an urn.

What happened, and what caused the MP’s ire, was that, due to the procedural motion put in place by this government at the beginning of this legislature, the House can be told to group vote. Obviously, this was done in order to allow the ministers time to take part in Council meetings in Brussels and other government business, seeing the Opposition’s refusal to pair.

But in practice it meant that not even the budget debates on individual ministries were voted for there and then, at the end of the debate. On Wednesday, at the end of the long budget debate, the House voted on no fewer than four ministries, one vote after another, just by having their names called.

This is just one instance of how Parliament continues to lose its importance. In today’s Parliament, assuming there is anyone who would like to do a Mintoff, there can be no re-run of the 1998 saga, since voting was condensed to the last day and carried out in this rigmarole fashion.

But then the whole budget debate debases the concept of a House debating each ministry. For the first half of the debate, you get the Opposition MPs queuing to launch into attacks on the ministry, or give their own assessment of particular areas of the ministry’s work. After this, one or two government MPs speak in glowing terms and the minister then concludes the debate. Of the many debates I have heard in these last few days, there were innumerable cases where the minister read out his prepared text and simply disregarded what had been said by the Opposition.

(Meanwhile, what has happened to the rule banning written speeches? I saw Opposition MPs and heard government ministers clearly reading from prepared speeches. You can tell the difference even by simply hearing them).

The sense pervading the proceedings is that no matter what the Opposition say or rant, the government goes on and on.

The way Parliament carries out its business makes no sense of the House scrutinising the Executive. It works somewhat better in its legislative function. For if the budget debate is meant to scrutinise the ministry, then opposing one rant to one concluding speech leaves everyone without a clear idea of who is right and who is wrong. It would have been far better, far saner even, to have a proper debate across a table with both sides interjecting to clarify, deny, confirm or whatever, rather than let the whole flow over.

And it surely is unthinkable that, after spending half a day debating that particular ministry, the vote is deferred until two or three days later, when all the votes can be condensed together.

The Opposition have a long list of complaints regarding how they are being treated in the House: ministers absent themselves from Question Time, replies are not given, parliamentary secretaries are left to face the music all on their own, with no idea as to how to face the onslaught. Government has its own complaints as well: the pairing issue is a dratted inconvenience, even though the procedural motion approved earlier on sidelines it somewhat.

No wonder, then, that Parliament has lost its centrality – the centrality it should have in a real democracy. No wonder nobody dreams of turning up to watch.

Somehow, I think the MPs themselves rather like it like that. If Parliament were to be broadcast again, even if through webcams, viewers would see the naked king as naked as he can be: empty seats, one or two lounging on either side, not even the minister being scrutinised paying any attention.

That may also be why Parliament gets such a bad press. No one noticed Minister Dolores Cristina announcing that the National Philharmonic had at last found a home, until I pointed it out. No one reported Anthony Zammit’s heart-warming, and very human, account of hospital queues.

And, of course, nobody reports the jokes either, which make politicians less the ogres than is currently thought – such as the Speaker telling George Pullicino he could not see Tonio Fenech behind him. Or Joe Debono Grech’s vintage speech, with interjections and jibes flying across the floor.

Nor the acrimony that sometimes surfaces between MPs of the same group, like the MP who became livid that one has to contend with strict timelines and also with one’s colleagues engaging in loud conversations nearby.

In this way has the House been allowed to be degraded. But now, if I am right, it will be getting even worse treatment – inconceivable though this may seem. For it would appear that the whole business of relocating the House and building a new Parliament is being taken out of the hands of the House itself. In other words, it looks as if it will have no say whatsoever in deciding its own future.

I think only Alfred Mifsud touched on this aspect in an article he wrote some days ago, but again it was immediately submerged in the wave of speculation over John Dalli and his successor.

The government has said it will not be using the people’s taxes to build the new Parliament and to carry out the Renzo Piano project. Of course, we all rejoiced that the new City entrance will not be paid for by our taxes. But does this mean that, since it will not come out of our taxes, it need not be discussed in Parliament?

We have seen, we are seeing, the project going on, regardless of what public comments were made. The applications were submitted, the preparatory work is being done, they have even dug under the Opera House ruins to test the consistency of the rock base.

Does this mean that there will not be any debate in the House on this all-important project? Does it mean that the government, like the Grand Masters of old, has autocratically decided that this will be done and no quibbles about it?

Mr Mifsud, if I understood him correctly, has asked about the financial consistency of the financial means to fund the project. A more cogent question would ask about the entire constitutionality of the procedure, especially if it is initiated without any parliamentary debate.

Of course, all it could take is for a single MP to table a private motion and ask for a vote. Or are we to understand this could be done for the St John’s Foundation project, but not for the City entrance project?

Let me be clear: I rather like the Renzo Piano plan. But even I have to admit that, not only were not all comments in the public arena in favour, but also that there have been some issues that rankle, like the open-air theatre, like the siting of Parliament itself, like the absence of any plans for a full-blown theatre.

The most fundamental question is: what kind of democratic government is it that ploughs on regardless of what the rest of the country is saying? Maybe, true, having rebuffed Mr Piano 20 years ago, we cannot face the possibility of doing it again. Maybe the negative comments come from ignorant, dyed-in-the-wool nostalgics (they don’t, actually). Maybe there is more that is good than bad in the Piano plan. And it would give Malta international fame.

But maybe, too, just like the present City Gate is a symbol of a Nationalist government still secretly Fascist (and Carnival-subservient) so too the new project will be a symbol of a government doing its best not to hear the voice of the people.



ngrima@independent.com.mt