Among this week’s turbulent Parliamentary sittings, with shouting, counter-claims and points of order, etc, there were also, thankfully, moments of pure farce.

Time and again in the past sittings, Opposition members have been trying very hard to bring the Speaker into the current political debate.

The matter can be synthesized in these terms: In the dying days of the former legislature, with the election coming up, then Labour Deputy Leader Anglu Farrugia claimed that the party was getting too close to the construction industry.

Soon after this, or immediately after this, Dr Farrugia stopped being Deputy Leader. For his outburst he was also vilified by many in the Labour rank and file.

After the election, Dr Farrugia was nominated Speaker of the House.

But his words have come back to haunt, maybe him, but mainly the Labour government.

For the Labour administration has been involved in innumerable controversies which regarded property, land deals etc, the Zonqor university being the latest, maybe superseded only by the coming wholesale changes at Mepa.

So among the many outbursts of the past week, many referred to Dr Farrugia’s interview. But the matter, and the words expressed in that interview quickly became the elephant in the room.

For they could not be discussed, and the man who uttered the fateful words could not defend himself or justify his views, for the simple reason he is now the Speaker, the Primus inter Partes, above party controversy.

So the words uttered more than two years ago seem destined to remain words that, once spoken, cannot be withdrawn or explained or changed.

But at a different level, those words would seem to have been premonitory warnings that were not taken heed of by the electorate which proceeded to give Labour its huge majority. Rarely has a politician of that rank come out with a direct warning about what was being cooked, allegedly, inside the party’s inner circles, and so near the election.

It was indeed a Kafka moment, as the Speaker had to sit and hear people discussing what he had said as if he himself was not in the room. Yet he had to remain Speaker and had to rule on statements which regarded his own past interview.

There was no way for the Speaker to exempt himself from hearing his own words used in the parliamentary debate. The most he could do was to insist on being quoted correctly, which he did at the appropriate moments.

Other than that, this week’s debate was yet another example of two clashing wide fronts, generating more heat than light.

The Opposition kept attacking government for its giving in to the developers’ lobby while the government countered by dredging up episodes where the past PN administration was not so virginal and ecologically-minded.

The impression, however, that is being fostered is that this is an administration that seeks to facilitate matters for developers and this overall impression seems to be sticking.