The new parliament chamber in the Renzo Piano building is much more intimate and less spar conducive than the old Westminster-style parliament at the palace.

Opponents do not face each other, but neither do they sit in a continental-style hemicycle either. It’s a special Maltese hybrid: a sort of horseshoe shape with 81 seats. Should both parties elect similar number of MPs, there is a good chance that MPs from opposing parties would be sitting next to each other.

So what new seating arrangements were made? The two parties took different approaches.

The government side kept to the same modus operandi: seating by seniority. Government whip Godfrey Farrugia said: “We stuck to the old system. The Prime Minister sits on the front row, flanked by the most senior ministers; in the rows behind him sit ministers and parliamentary secretaries and the rest of the MPs according to how long they have been in parliament.”

As the group whip, he said, he sits behind the leader of the house, Deputy Prime Minsiter Louis Grech. “It was decided that we retain the same system so that everyone always has the same desk and the same microphone,” he said.

The PN Opposition went for a less conservative approach. The top officials of the Opposition for parliamentary affairs - the Opposition Leader, the whip, the two deputy leaders and the secretary general - sit on the front bench. “The rest is free seating,” said opposition whip David Agius.

“This new chamber allows us to blur the difference between front and back benchers: we are all one team,” he said, explaining that the way the PN shadow ministries are assigned means that Opposition MPs have to work in clusters. 

The Gozitan MP Giovanna Debono, who no longer forms part of the PN, sits at the very back row, on the last seat on the opposition side.

Opposition MPs are being encouraged to use their high-tech equipped common room as a working space. The government side are more keen on individual offices. Dr Farrugia, in fact, bemoaned the lack of offices.

While all the government ministers have their own offices, there are not enough rooms for the seven parliamentary secretaries and the six committee chairpersons. “That’s 13 people who have to share four offices,” he said. “I am doing miracles,” he said.