The government will today have its fingers well and truly crossed as its second nominee to the European Court of Auditors, Leo Brincat, faces the traditional grilling before the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control.

Truth be told, the government can hardly afford yet another embarrassment after its first nominee, Toni Abela – who had stepped down from his post at the Labour Party’s deputy leader in order to be able to take up the position, failed his own grilling.

Mr Brincat, who has been nominated by the government to fill Malta’s vacancy at the European Court of Auditors, will today seek the approval of the same parliamentary committee MEPs who had rejected Malta’s first choice - Labour Party veteran and deputy leader Toni Abela – by an overwhelming vote of 17-9 last March.

Among the issues Mr Brincat could expect to face will be those related to his performance as Malta’s environment minister and perhaps certain issues related to the use of European Union funds by his ministry during his time at the helm, which is, after all, the core job of those on the ECA - an institution tasked with fighting fiscal corruption.

Some of those questions will be easily answered, others, perhaps, not quite so easily.

But the main question that most people in Malta will be expecting to be raised will be that of how Mr Brincat considers himself to be a suitable candidate for the ECA after he voted in favour of the Konrad Mizzi in the no confidence motion raised against him earlier this year in light of his exposure in the Panama Papers, where he was shown to have opened a secret company in Panama and a secret trust in New Zealand while serving as a Cabinet minister.

The question has been a topical one ever since Opposition leader Simon Busuttil chastised Mr Brincat in Parliament for having voted in line with his party in the no confidence motion against Dr Mizzi last May.  Dr Busuttil made the remark during the debate of that same no confidence motion. The Prime Minister had retorted by describing the comment as a “veiled threat” that the opposition would seek to scuttle Mr Brincat’s chances of emerging successful from the grilling.

But it should be noted that Mr Brincat, in voting against the opposition’s no confidence motion against Dr Mizzi, was doing what was required of him given Malta’s particular form of parliamentary democracy.

In Malta’s parliamentary democracy, MPs are obliged to toe the party line in each and every vote taken in Parliament.  The only exceptions are in cases in which they are given a free vote by their party leader, through the party’s parliamentary whip such as, for example, the free vote given to Nationalist MPs by former party leader Lawrence Gonzi in the divorce vote.

Labour MPs were given no such free vote when it came to the no confidence motion against Dr Mizzi.  This newsroom had made it a point to ask the Prime Minister specifically about this point before the vote, and the answer was a distinct ‘No’.

Of course, Mr Brincat could have chosen a vote a conscience, rebelled against the party and either voted in favour of the opposition’s motion or abstained.  That, however, would have resulted in something of a Catch-22 situation: it would have certainly earned him brownie points with the grilling committee, but it would have also, in all likeliness, lost him the nomination in the process.