I refer to Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici’s decidedly friendless views on some fabled supremacy of Parliament, which he misreads in the Constitution of Malta (June 28). My views on the supremacy of the Constitution have received the full support of Kevin Aquilina, Dean of the Faculty of Laws, and of Austin Bencini, Ph.D. in constitutional law and University lecturer in the same discipline. Prof. Mifsud Bonnici’s views have the full and, may I add, devoted, support of Prof. Mifsud Bonnici.

He sees a contradiction between the Constitution, being the supreme law, and Parliament, in fact, acting as if it were superior to the Constitution. There is no contradiction at all. The Constitution is unquestionably the supreme law but Parliament, with the passive complicity of a comatose Constitutional Court, has been allowed by that court to act as if no constitutional restraints were in place. Parliament has, over the years, grabbed for itself a supremacy that the Constitution nowhere promotes or suffers.

Prof. Mifsud Bonnici has quoted some practical instances which, in his view, support his “supremacy of Parliament” interpretation of the Constitution.

Actually, those examples do nothing of the sort. They only demonstrate the supremacy of abuse by Parliament, not of the supremacy of Parliament. They only prove that the innate supremacy of the Constitution, willed by the Constitution itself, can, in practice, be subverted when an insatiable Parliament meets an anaemic Constitutional Court. Prof. Mifsud Bonnici appears jubilant at the result. Those who worship democracy and human rights find it the right time to serve the hemlock.

Prof. Mifsud Bonnici is upset because he believes we have misunderstood his doctrines. We are upset because we have understood them only too well.