Joseph Muscat assuming up his parliamentary duties next week will bring the vigour of youth to a Parliament that certainly needs, and cries out loud for rejuvenation. I am only perplexed that it had to be a young person inside that very same institution to make way and help create the required space for the Labour leader’s entry into it. But then, politics is an odd game and I have long stopped trying to understand it.

One thing is certain – Joseph’s arrival will hopefully cause the ripple effect that our House of Representatives so urgently deserves after many years of utter neglect under a seemingly endless cloud of boredom. Since the shock waves caused by the events of 1998, the country’s highest institution has been through one of its dullest periods, no doubt rendered even more lifeless in 2004 when the Brussels Parliament automatically assumed the ascendancy.

A parliament is not really invigorated by visits from Heads of State or high-profile characters. These are only temporary and often expensive interruptions to House routine. Nor are the games played with children and teenagers inside Parliament anything more than fruitless games supposedly meant to introduce to them that “special feeling” with regard to the administration of the country and the democratic process.

Parliament, over the past decade, has been turned into a rubberstamp, a venue where the business of the day seems to be aimed more at avoiding proper debate than actually encouraging it. An irresponsible method of replying to parliamentary questions has also resulted in the assassination of what once was a highly informative and yet entertaining part of parliamentary procedure. On some senseless pretext, for example, ministers in the last legislature barefacedly refused to provide details of public spending, or kept postponing their exposure so long that, when published, they were already yesterday’s trash.

It is true also that the art of parliamentary debate has suffered hugely following the gradual disappearance of some of the best speakers the House has had since independence 44 years ago. It is no wonder the Strangers’ Gallery today could better be described as a lonely hearts’ club where only the odd stranger, very strange indeed, finds some sort of solace from the tedious proceedings inside that tired old place. There were times when finding a vacant seat in the Strangers’ Gallery was as difficult as trying to book a place in a popular rock concert. There were also times, it must be said, when the strangers’ unruly behaviour, often clapping and booing as they watched the speakers taking on one another in heated debate, inevitably led to security measures with the Strangers’ Gallery being emptied often being the only option.

Mr Speaker, whoever he/she happened to be or belong to at the time, did not have it easy. For those of us in the media, going to Parliament was, more often than not, an exciting proposition. Sometimes one got the impression that certain speakers from both sides of the House were more intent on addressing the reporters and political editors present rather than their honourable colleagues.

But all that withered away as the national Parliament seemed to become more of an inconvenience to the government rather than the rightful place where to debate the most important issues facing the nation. Rubberstamping decisions already reached within the closed environs of Castile slowly but surely bled Parliament to a natural death.

All the way back since the 1960s, different prime ministers had left their own mark. Gorg Borg Olivier gave parliamentary democracy integrity, Dom Mintoff painted it in his unique loud colours, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici calmly rode it. Eddie Fenech Adami tolerated it and Lawrence Gonzi sadly let it go to the dogs. The arrogance and complete disregard of parliamentary fairness during the past four years did not go unnoticed with voters at the last election, which is why more of them voted for change, something that, as constitutional things go, was still denied to them.

The emergence of a new generation of parliamentarians hopefully will give the Maltese Parliament back the relevance it deserves. It is a tall order for Joseph Muscat. Resuscitating a clinically dead institution at a time when people’s perception of it is already set at the point where they see Brussels superiority as some kind of destiny, would do justice and possibly give credence to the Lazarus story, more so since it is the government that needs to first start the bidding. Is

it going to be yet another lack-lustre legislature marked by more boredom and complete disinterest from within and without?

Joseph Muscat’s injection of youth, however, could very well do the trick. People need to regain their trust in the House of Representatives, the tenants of which were after all elected by them. Every MP has to play his part, as does Mr Speaker by refusing to retain, let alone prolong, the rubberstamp role Parliament has sadly been accorded in recent years.

Otherwise it will be just more of the same, honourable MPs speaking to absent honourable colleagues and in empty rows and a Strangers’ Gallery bereft of any strangers. It reminds one of the amusing anecdote from the Mother of Parliaments when a young peer once asked Disraeli what course of study he had best take to qualify himself for speaking to gain the ear of the House.

“Have you a graveyard near your home?” asked Disraeli.

“Yes,” was the reply.

“Then,” said Disraeli, “I should recommend you to visit it early of a morning and practise on the tombstones.”