It will still be an arduous and tortuous battle to sanction a Member of Parliament who abuses parliamentary privilege, but the white paper proposing this is one small step in the right direction. Once implemented, citizens who feel aggrieved by what MPs say about them in the House of Representatives will be able to at least challenge them.
As things stand now, any MP can savagely attack private citizens in a personal manner, safe in the knowledge that what he or she says in the House cannot lead to any legal consequences. It happened many times, even recently, that MPs abused the parliamentary privilege afforded to them. The intention of such a privilege is for MPs not to be afraid to uncover delicate matters of national interest, but over the years some MPs chose to use this license to conjure lies about third parties who could do nothing to clear their name.
The white paper is open for public consultation until mid-October. Considering the prevailing political situation, it is next to impossible to expect that it will become law in this legislature. There might be time to present it as a first reading, but it seems unlikely that it will go any further than that. What one could hope for is that, unless by some miracle it passes through all parliamentary stages this time round, both political parties include this proposal – or perhaps a stronger one – in their election manifesto. Given that it has presented this document, I believe the Nationalist Party will do so. Maybe the Labour Party will follow suit.
The setting up of the office of the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards will give private citizens – and, why not, even MPs who feel aggrieved by what their colleagues say about them in the House – the opportunity to file a complaint if they feel insulted by what MPs say about them in Parliament. Until now, they cannot do so.
In a way, filing a complaint with the Commissioner would be tantamount to submitting a libel case in the law courts.
Today, people who are slandered by others can resort to the law courts to defend themselves there. The courts are duty-bound to hear all witnesses before deciding on the issue, and fines are imposed if claims made are not substantiated. Initiating a libel case in court is seen as a way for the aggrieved person to immediately defend his or her name in the wake of allegations, insinuations or lies said about them. Often, these cases take years to go through the law courts system, by which time one would have almost forgotten what the initial argument was and, added to this, circumstances change. But filing a libel suit is a legitimate way through which people who are defamed can at least make it public that they are challenging the person who is slandering them.
The course of action proposed with regard to MPs who, it is felt, abuse parliamentary privilege, is however different. No fines will be imposed on the MP who is found guilty; MPs can be severely admonished or reprimanded, he or she can also be censured and, in the worst-case scenario, according to the white paper, MPs can be suspended from the House for a month. The fact that it is not the Commissioner who decides on what punishment is given complicates the procedure further. If the Commissioner finds an MP guilty of abusing parliamentary privilege, a report must be presented to the Standing Committee on Privileges in the House, which in turn, must approve the Commissioner’s conclusions and recommend that the House takes action. The House must then, of course, agree with this action to have the MP punished.
This is why in my first sentence I wrote that it is a long and difficult battle to get an MP sanctioned. If this white paper is implemented into law, I can imagine that MPs will be defending their own in this regard. I cannot foresee that Nationalist MPs will accept that one of their colleagues is sanctioned, and the same goes for Labour. If, then, we have a one-seat majority as we have today, will the party in government accept to have one of its MPs suspended when a vote is about to be taken?
I think that the process should be simplified, and that it should not be the House which has the last word. If the Commissioner is to be appointed with a two-thirds majority backing – which effectively means that he or she would have the support of both sides of the political fence – why shouldn’t it be the Commissioner who decides the punishment that is to be inflicted? Involving the House to approve or reject the Commissioner’s decision is a way of saying that the House does not have full confidence in his impartiality – especially if and when the Commissioner’s recommendation for one of the three categories of punishment is turned down.
No time limit has been imposed on the Commissioner’s investigation; and no time limit has been imposed on the House to deal with any reports he presents. This is set to delay the outcome of the procedure; one hopes that it will not take years for such matters to be concluded. Nationalist MP Censu Galea, who has been in the forefront to have parliamentary privilege eliminated, is right when he hopes that such investigations will not take as long as libel cases to be judged.
What happens if an MP loses his seat while an investigation on his or her claims is still ongoing is not specified in the white paper.
So I do welcome the step being proposed in the white paper; at least the government is acknowledging that people should have the right to contest anything that is said about them in Parliament, and maybe MPs will now think twice before slandering private citizens in the highest institution of the land.
But, as I have written in this column on several occasions, I still believe that the best way forward is to remove parliamentary privilege except for cases relating of national interest.
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