Labour could consider constitutional redress

Alex Sceberras Trigona (“Undue compensation”, August 8) raises a series of legal queries concerning the interpretation of the fundamental law, the Constitution of Malta, in connection with the current political situation.

Legislature will not be in a position to function- Philip M. Magri, LL.D., Żebbuġ

Above all, he asks whether the Nationalist Party should be deemed deprived of its constitutional entitlement to four extra seats when, in truth, the wafer-thin majority has now been lost to Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando who will sit in Parliament as an independent MP.

I was surprised by the ineptitude shown by the PN in confronting the logic presented by Dr Sceberras Trigona. Rather than tackle the issue – as it was evidently intended at the outset – as an academic exercise raising serious problems of interpretation with the Constitution and constitutional law principles , the reply merely dispatched heavy personal insults to the author of the article.

People, particularly law students, who are interested in constitutional law development would do well to ignore all the insults under which PN have attempted to bury the author's freedom of expression and refer directly to the article itself.

From a strictly legal point of view, it is true that Article 52 of the Constitution provides for the composition of the House of Representatives seemingly immediately after an election. However, this does not by itself exclude the fact that a government may be held to have lost its majority, not only of seats but also of votes, should one of its elected MPs abandon the governing party's benches.

If so, can the government continue clinging on to its four additional seats, given the loss of the democratic justification which led to its being awarded such additional seats in the first place?

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with an argument providing that a government should not be just 'democratically elected' but should also retain and safeguard democracy throughout its legislature.

According to Dr Sceberras Trigona this means that, upon losing Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando the PN government lost its democratic entitlement under the above-mentioned article to the additional seats which allowed it to govern with a majority. From a practical point of view, as things currently stand the legislature will not be in a position to function, failing the continued support of Dr Pullicino Orlando, who is now an independent MP, in the absence of further votes by the Speaker.

Such a government – in awe of every vote and held at ransom by individual interests – if not entirely undemocratic is clearly unrepresentative and untenable. There is clearly nothing wrong in stating that should a situation like this last much longer, PL could consider redress through constitutional remedies.