Debating a deal of the magnitude of the Enemalta-Shanghai Electric Power agreement in Parliament with one of the parties not being fully cognisant of the agreement’s details was tantamount to asking that party to go to a gunfight armed with a toothbrush.

Which is why last night’s long-awaited tabling of the government’s Energy Sector Cooperation agreement between the Enemalta Corporation, SEP Malta Holdings Ltd and Shanghai Electric Corporation is welcome. 

After all, how on earth could the opposition have been expected to debate the deal, the biggest the country has ever seen in the energy minister’s words, without being privy to all the details?

To even suggest that Parliament, the nation’s highest institution, should have debated an agreement of this importance and magnitude in such a way is utterly ludicrous, to say the least. 

The suggestion in itself disrespects the very fundamentals of a parliamentary democracy.  But this has clearly been the government’s tack from the outset and it appears that it has published the agreement only because the debate would have otherwise been permanently stalled by the opposition.

Exactly how the opposition was expected to have carried out an informed debate, which is, after all, essential to a parliamentary democracy, without knowing the details of contract to be debated defies belief.

After the opposition on Tuesday cried foul over the prospect of holding a parliamentary debate on the agreement that night, in the absence of a motion and with the opposition claiming it had not even been informed of the debate, the debate was postponed to a future date.

But the opposition’s main bone of contention was not that it had not been officially informed, or even unofficially according to the opposition’s whip.  The main bone of contention is that the government had not even seen a copy of the agreement signed by the government that was to be up for discussion, and despite the government’s repeated pledges that it was do so before any parliamentary debate on the subject.

The opposition said the fact that the government wanted to hold the debate without publishing the documents related to that very debate contrasted with the administration's aim to be the most transparent in history.  And it is quite right.

In a reaction, the Labour Party in government said the PN tactics were an attempt by the opposition leader to postpone the debate on the contract, which, it said, would take Enemalta out of its current multi-million euro financial black hole.  It also accused the opposition leader of being ‘negative and destructive’.

While we are entirely certain that no one wants to scuttle the Chinese investment into the long ailing Enemalta and to see the energy corporation back on an even financial keel.

But, on the other hand, is the opposition, and for that matter the people themselves, expected to simply take anything the government says simply at face value without question, and turn parliamentary debate into a mere rubber stamping exercise for the government of the day?

One can only wonder what a Labour Party in opposition would have made of such behaviour from a Nationalist Party in government. 

Anything short of having published the agreement before the debate as the government has now done would have made a mockery of the country’s parliamentary process.