Debono insists it must not be business as usual after Tuesday's confidence vote

Nationalist MP Franco Debono said today that it must not be business as usual for the government after next Tuesday's confidence vote. It needed to hear the people and its backbenchers and fine-tune its actions.

Dr Debono also said that had he been Austin Gatt, he would have resigned before yesterday's vote in parliament, and he would certainly not have declared himself satisfied after the vote was taken and the Speaker had to cast the deciding vote.

Speaking in a fast-moving interview on PBS's Dissett, Dr Debono said the minister's reaction had reflected insensitivity to the people.

The Nationalist MP insisted that yesterday's vote was solely about a minister's individual responsibility, and therefore he would back the government as a whole in the confidence vote on Tuesday.

But, he stressed, the government needed to listen to what the people and its own backbenchers were saying.

The PN had already seen defeats in the MEP elections and on the divorce issue, he said. If it did not listen to its own MPs now, it would have to listen to the people at election time, with the resultant political consequences.

After next Tuesday, it should not be business as usual. The government needed to 'fine tune' its actions.

It was unacceptable, Dr Debono said, that it had taken more than a year after his election before he had a meeting with Edgar Galea Curmi, the PM's chief of staff, and that was only after he requested the meeting. Such a person should be holding regular meetings with all backbenchers.

When it was pointed out to Dr Debono that Manuel Delia, head of Austin Gatt's secretariat, had formally declared that he intended to stand for election – on the same district contested by him - the Nationalist MP said nothing had changed for him. After all, he had stood for election when the same district was contested by stalwarts such as Louis Galea and Helen D'Amato. Now it was up to the people, and he wished Mr Delia well.

Asked if he had confidence in Dr Gatt, Dr Debono said he had voted yesterday on the basis of what was in that motion.

He said that had the prime minister invited him to become minister instead of Dr Gatt, he would have refused, because he did not consider himself well versed in the areas that ministry was responsible for.

Dr Debono insisted that what he had done yesterday might be unusual in the context of practice in Malta, but it was something which happened often in modern parliaments abroad. He had acted as all modern MPs should, upholding the views of the people and making sure they were heard.

Dr Debono refused to give a straight 'yes' or 'no' when asked if Eddie Fenech Adami had been among those who urged him to reconsider and not to abstain in yesterday's vote. He heaped praise on Dr Fenech Adami, but then said that he had stood true to his word when he had said he would abstain.

Within the PN executive, he said, he was not alone in the arguments he had made on the bus service, and some felt more people should have acted.

Asked if he intended to bring up other issues, Dr Debono insisted that Malta needed to strengthen its democracy and update the Constitution. It also needed to act on the regulation of political parties, party funding, and the administration of PBS. After all, he stressed, the President, the Chief Justice and the Speaker had all called for reform, and he felt such reform was urgent.

The Chief Justice himself recently said that the government could not focus on the economy without giving sufficient importance to other areas which were also important to the economy itself, such as justice.

Dr Debono said the PN executive had not 'ordered' Nationalist MPs to vote against the Opposition motion yesterday, but it had issued a 'recommendation'. And, after all, the prime minister during the divorce debate had actually voted against the will of the people as expressed in the referendum. It was useless saying there was a free vote there. Could there be a free vote where the will of the people was expressed?

Dr Debono disputed that he had violated the code of practice of parliamentary assistants, such as in his criticism on the state of democracy particularly on PBS. He pointed out that he was assistant in the Office of the Prime Minister and Dr Gonzi was not the minister for democracy, or PBS.