The officially declared “unanimous vote” taken on Wednesday to amend the Constitution was actually the vote of the 44 MPs who turned up to vote at the end of a longer than usual sitting of the House of Representatives.

In fact, therefore, the 44 MPs who voted were just over the two-thirds vote required by the Constitution.

It would seem that all the MPs currently in Malta attended and voted; the rest were absent from the island.

These included the Prime Minister himself, who was in New York to address the UN General Assembly, as well as a House delegation led by the Speaker himself, which was on an official visit to India.

This “unanimous” vote, which turns out not to have been unanimous at all, reminds House observers of the other “unanimous” vote taken by the House to ratify the defunct EU Constitution, which then turned out to have been taken without a vote being demanded and in the presence of only a handful of MPs.