Marlene Farrugia, who on Tuesday resigned from the Labour Party, feels that her party let her down when it missed an opportunity to honour its pledges of transparency and accountability. The government’s refusal to give environmental NGOs a bigger role was the last straw for her, after having given the PL multiple chances to change its ways. Interviewed by Neil Camilleri, the now independent MP also warns that there are several other PL MPs who, like her, disagree with the way the country is being governed.

“My conscience is clear,” outspoken MP Marlene Farrugia says convincingly, sitting inside her Vittoriosa dentistry clinic barely 12 hours after quitting the PL’s ranks. “I had thought about leaving the PL on many occasions when there was a crisis in agreement about what should be done versus what was being done but I always decided to give the party another chance. I always thought we could learn from our mistakes and that there would be no reason to leave.”

What happened on Tuesday, when the government rejected Opposition amendments on the role of eNGOs in the new Environment Authority, was the last straw, she says. “I was not planning on resigning this week. I had hoped to be able to convince the government to change its ways through the parliamentary debate. I did not know it would come to this.”

Nonetheless, Dr Farrugia says she feels free after taking the decision to resign. “I feel that I took the right decision and that I stood up to be counted when I was needed.”

But the MP could not possibly have thought that the Opposition’s amendments would go through, this newspaper remarked.

“I hoped the government would budge,” she explains. “Those two clauses, which might be seen by many as being insignificant, actually meant that the government had a chance to show whether its pledges of transparency and accountability were true or not. I felt that the government had the chance to walk the talk but let me down instead. I felt that I had to hand in my resignation because I believe that civil society has to be part of our governance if we want to be transparent.”

I discussed resigning with Godfrey

So how did her partner, Government Parliamentary Whip Godfrey Farrugia, take the news? And was his position still tenable? “I have always discussed these things with Godfrey. Like me he has lived through more than one crisis of conscience when it came to certain decisions within our party. He understood my position whenever I spoke to him about resigning. As to whether his position is tenable I think you should ask him.”

Shortly after the resignation Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said there was no “acrimony” between him and Marlene Farrugia. But what was their relationship really like? “From my end I have always had a good relationship with Joseph Muscat. I had resent him the submissions made by the NGOs in the past few days and I tried to convince him that the PL should be the party that moved those amendments. There was no confrontation in this case and I always did things with good intentions.

But what about the Prime Minister, we asked. “Prima facie he has always been civil with me but only he knows what is in his heart. You should ask him.”

Did Joseph Muscat want to get rid of her? “That possibility exists, seeing that I am a very outspoken MP. I have always spoken out for what I believed in and been active within the Parliamentary group, urging it to change some of its positions. Maybe Joseph Muscat was annoyed with me, maybe he was not. I don’t know.”

We asked the MP if her relationship with the PM had taken a dive after Godfrey’s removal from cabinet. “I was quite annoyed that the PM decided to remove Godfrey as Health Minister because I believe that he was doing a good job of overhauling the health sector, which is ridden with corruption. Even the way he was treated by the PL’s own media back then irked me a lot. I disagreed with the decision and made my feelings known right from the start.”

I am not the only one

Dr Farrugia says she was not the only dissenting voice within the PN. “There are many others who ask questions, even if not so openly.” Are you referring to MPs? “Yes, I am. They might not be as vociferous as I am in the Parliamentary Group or the media but they feel the same way that I do.” Are there many of them? “Yes, there is a substantial number,” she asserts.  

So what were their main points of contempt, we asked. “The environmental issue is a concern for many of us. So is the issue of sustainable development – the type of economy we are pursuing. Many MPs also have reservations about embryo freezing. Generally speaking, many think that the way the government is governing is not in line with what was promised before the election. This is not transparent governance. MPs were promised that they would be involved in important decisions but in many cases we only get to learn about things from the media. Many MPs want this government to be what it promised to be when it labelled itself the Labour Movement.”

Future elections and the PN

Dr Farrugia says that, up till now her mind is still set on not contesting the next general election. That “up till now” hints that she does not exclude the possibility altogether. But the MP says the plan, unless circumstances dictated otherwise, was always to serve for ten years in Parliament and then leave.

Would she consider contesting on the PN ticket should she change her mind, we asked. “I have always reasoned in a way that was outside the political party straightjacket. The PN has its own baggage but on the environment it is admitting its past mistakes and is coming up with new ideas. So there are hopes that it will come in line with my own political thoughts and beliefs. Yet at the moment I don’t see myself as becoming part of that party. I want to be the voice of the people without the baggage that both parties carry with them.”

Would you consider becoming the voice of AD? “In many instances I have been what could be considered the voice of AD but I was and will remain and MP for the people, not political parties. There are elements where civil society has agreed with the stands taken in the past by AD so there were many stands taken by AD which I shared. But then again this was also the case with the PL and the PN.”

Dr Farrugia says she will be voting according to her conscience and after consulting about the subjects at hand, including with experts. “I will be voting above partisan affiliations,” she says.

PN edging closer to my own beliefs

Asked if she had more in common with Simon Busuttil than with Joseph Muscat, Dr Farrugia says both leaders have their positives. “The PN is becoming more leftist when it comes to the environment and the PL is moving towards the right both on the economy and the environment. There is a big overlap. I think that my ideologies respect the grey areas of politics. Many of us have been brought up either red or blue but I have always had an input from both sides. I do not feel that I belong exclusively to the right or the left. I feel that I have ideas that can be new to the country and can work.”

Would you say that the PN is edging closer towards your beliefs while the PL is going in the opposite direction? “Yes, I would say that is the case.”

Cracks in Muscat’s government?

Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil described Dr Farrugia’s resignation as the first crack in Joseph Muscat’s government. Does she agree with that assessment? “Yes, unless the government changes its ways and starts honouring the pledges that got it elected with such an overwhelming majority. The Labour Movement spoke about its ideologies before the election but after rising to power it immediately showed that it would govern in a different way than it had promised. Labour would criticise over behaviour it is now copying from the government benches.”

So would the PL win the next election if it kept going at the current rate? “It could surely win the election with an attitude change. We are still midway through the legislature. The current way of doing politics has to change. The government is simply not delivering what it promised.”

My intention was not to harm the PL

Dr Farrugia also spoke highly of Simon Busuttil and his shadow cabinet when asked if a future PN government could be different from past PN administrations. “Simon Busuttil has already shown that he is trying to be different from past governments. One has only to look at his front benches – his shadow cabinet. There are several women, for example, who are experts in their respective fields and who are showing that they are pushing for a different style of politics. Several of them, especially the younger ones, have fresh ideas.”

Dr Farrugia also replied to criticism levelled against her decision to remain an independent MP.  One such critic was Manuel Micallef, a failed Labour candidate who also served as the PL media’s head of news. He wrote that MPs who declared themselves independent no longer represented those who elected them.

Dr Farrugia justifies her decision by saying that she has kept true to the promises made by the Labour Movement while it was the PL which had strayed from that path. “If anything it is the PL that is not keeping in line with its own electoral manifesto.”

So how does her decision to become an independent MP differ from that taken by her ex-husband, former PN MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando? “Back then the government had a one-seat majority and the intention could have been to bring down the government. This is clearly not the case with my resignation, seeing that the government had a nine-seat majority. If I had wanted to harm the PL I would have done this just before the next election and not have given it time to learn from its mistakes.”