Brazen contempt of consistency

Charles Mangion, the acting leader of the Malta Labour Party, yet again attacks the majority for offering the opposition the prestigious office of Speaker of the House. The offence lies in that the offer was restricted to a sitting Labour member of Parliament, reducing Labour's original votes in Parliament to two votes fewer than the majority party.

Instead of politely replying no thank you, the opposition decided to politicise the offer by attributing ulterior political motive to the Nationalist government, namely to reduce the opposition's strength in Parliament.

In so doing, Dr Mangion seems to have forgotten that Labour did not make any such protestations in the name of democracy when, during the 1998 political crisis, the present MLP supported a controversial decision by the then Speaker of the House ruling that, notwithstanding the fact that the then Sant government had been defeated by one vote in Parliament, the government would have Parliament's confidence all the same since the then Nationalist opposition required not one vote more than the government side to topple the Sant government but two!

In an incredible ironic twist of history, it is the MLP which is now crying foul because, should it accept the Office of Speaker, it would also end up requiring two votes to topple the Gonzi Administration.

Is this the new dawn of Labour if it still believes that the electorate does not realise when a political party plays the "heads I win, tails you lose" tactics?

In 1998, the MLP had also enjoyed a one-seat majority in the House of Representatives. The Speaker then had been chosen from among the Labour "area" but was not an elected Labour MP.

When the unthinkable happened and Dom Mintoff decided to vote against the Cottonera project, an issue declared by then Prime Minister Alfred Sant as a vote of confidence in the government, the Labour government was defeated by one vote. The MLP, however, had argued that a one-vote defeat was not enough to topple the Sant government because the Speaker had also to be counted even though he could not vote on the "confidence vote", having only a casting vote.

In 1998, therefore, the issue revolved around the constitutional interpretation of whether the Speaker should or should not be included in computing the fixed number of MPs required by the Constitution to form an absolute majority of Parliament in such a situation.

The Speaker then ruled that: "Even if last Tuesday's vote (on the Cottonera project) was to be interpreted as a vote of no confidence because of the political interpretation the government chose to give it, it would still not have been approved because 'all the members of the House' in this case means 70 members and not 69". This controversially meant that the 35 MPs out of 69 members expressing lack of confidence in the government were not enough.

A huge controversy arose on the correct interpretation to be given because the ruling implied that the Speaker had, in fact, to be added to the number of members of Parliament even though the Speaker did not participate in the original voting.

The significant irony of history is that, in 1998 , Dr Mangion's MLP felt more than comfortable to support the Speaker's ruling that the Nationalist opposition needed two votes over the government to win. Today, however, the same Labour MPs are complaining that acceptance of the Speaker's Office would put them in the Nationalist's opposition shoes of requiring not one MP but two to change allegiance for a vote of no confidence to be carried.

Incredible but true.