If it wants to be taken seriously in the coming years, the government of Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi should learn the correct definition of the word “respect”. The minds of the Maltese people are still resounding with the declaration that he made on the Granaries in Floriana on Tuesday 11 March, after the results of the last election. That day, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi promised to do his utmost for the PN to be a government for all Maltese people.

However the way things are being done at the moment tells a different story. In more than one occasion he not only did not give the impression that he would be a government for all Maltese alike, but he showed a great lack of respect towards the Labour opposition included in more than 141,000 voters who in the last election wanted a change in government.

One certainly cannot describe the proposal of Speaker of the House of Representatives as described by Minister Tonio Borg as being historic, as if it was an act of respect being shown towards the Labour opposition. The proposal made by the government does however show the great turmoil that is being faced by the Gonzi administration, with a majority of one seat in this parliament as opposed to the five it had in the last legislature.

The government was proposing that the Speaker throughout this legislature would be a member of the opposition and should be chosen in agreement by both sides of the house, on condition that both sides reach an agreement about pairing.

The intention of the government was clear – to weaken the opposition by having a majority of two votes in parliament instead of one. The government’s intention was made clear when the Nationalist parliamentary group chose Louis Galea as a Speaker, a person who was elected in the last election.

This was after the Prime Minister did not accept the proposal made to him by the Labour parliamentary group, a proposal that stated that all should remain as was in the previous legislature for the first two months from the inauguration of Parliament, that is that the Speaker should be Anton Tabone and with Carmelo Abela as Deputy Speaker.

As for pairing, we said that we would consider each case according to its own merits, until the permanent position would be taken by the new leadership.

Lawrence Gonzi also announced that the government would not be ready to discuss any other nomination, even after the new Labour leader is elected, unless the opposition accepts a pairing agreement.

The intentions of the government were made even clearer when Lawrence Gonzi insisted that the government will not even be giving the opposition the chance to nominate a Deputy Speaker, if no pairing agreement is reached.

Contrary to the impression that the government is trying to give from its side, pairing does not only depend on the goodwill of the opposition side. The government should not expect the opposition to accept unreasonable proposals just because the government says that they are historical proposals.

Agreement on pairing should be reached, but only after a reasonable balance is met by both parties and in the public interest. If the government really wants to be taken seriously, as being a government for all the people, it should look to cooperate more with the opposition, and above all show respect to the opposition and to those who voted Labour in the last election.

It is certain that the way the government decided about the Partnership for Peace and the way it is actively taking sensitive decisions, among them the gift given to the ex-Director of Information of the PN, Gordon Pisani, is certainly not helping the credibility of Lawrence Gonzi and the promise that he made to be a government for all the Maltese people.

Silvio Parnis is a Labour MP

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www.silvioparnis.com