As of January this year, for reasons known to everyone, parliamentary debates at voting time attracted interest more than they usually do. But is parliamentary democracy truly alive?

In my view, there are problems, and much more needs to be done to have a proper and sound debate in Parliament and for Parliament to function as a true democratic institution. One has to state from the outset that Parliament does not belong to the government, irrespective of who is in government. Our Parliament is called the House of Representatives. It belongs to all the elected members who represent the people that elected them. Parliament belongs to the people, irrespective of the political parties and of which party is in government or opposition. This means that all members are equal and their rights have to be respected and defended.

MPs, however, are members of political parties and take sides according to which party is in government and which one is in opposition. This, however, does not exclude that members have equal rights. It is also true that most of the time, it is the majority that dictates what should be discussed in Parliament. However, even the standing orders stipulate that if the minority in Parliament want to discuss a specific issue or present a motion, then these have to be presented and discussed. Every alternate Thursday is dedicated to this purpose.

The person who keeps this balance is the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Of course this is not an easy task and not all is rosy while chairing the House, and I can speak from experience. MPs ask the Speaker to defend their rights and of course, in line with the standing orders, the Speaker should do so. There is also a standing committee which should regulate the business of the House. This House Business Committee is chaired by the Speaker and the government has three members while the opposition has two members. The composition itself dictates that the government, in the case of no agreement, can always have its way by means of the majority in this committee. However, I believe that if an issue is raised in the House, then the Speaker has to rule in such a way as to defend the minority as well.

Is all this happening at the moment? The simple answer is no. At present, there are about eighteen pieces of legislation on the agenda. Also, there are seven motions which are waiting to be debated. It is unusual to have such a long list on the agenda. The reason is that the government has blocked vote-taking and this has been happening since the end of January.

The opposition tabled a number of motions, but two are important. The first one is regarding the Justice and Interior Ministry and the other is regarding action that Richard Cachia Caruana took in Brussels. It is obvious that the government is very much embarrassed by the motions and is doing what it can to prevent the discussion and the vote from taking place. There was an agreement between both sides that the first motion will be debated by the end of January this year. Of course this did not materialise. When the opposition asked when these motions will be debated the answer from the GonziPN clan was that there are other pressing debates to take place in the House and unilaterally GonziPN decided to vote on the implementation of the budgetary measures bill on 9 May. Those who do not closely follow proceedings in Parliament might agree with the government, however, one has to say that the First reading of this bill was made in December last year. The first reading is the first step before the actual debate and after seven days from its publication the debate can start. Usually, this debate starts in January, soon after the Christmas holidays. This time round this was not the case. It took months before the debate started, and when it started, government members of parliament opted to speak successively to avoid the end of this debate. Now, of course, there is this urgency due to the time frame imposed by law.

There are other issues that one needs to point out on how this so called ‘democratic’ government is running and treating Parliament, which is supposedly the highest institution in the country. But it is time to conclude this article and I do so by stating that it takes much more than just lip service to have a democratic parliamentary democracy that defends the rights of the majority and the minority at the same time.

Carmelo Abela is Labour Main Spokesperson for Social Policy

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