The central function of the House of Representatives is to scrutinise, debate and approve laws. It is not to govern the country as such, but to provide the people who do so – the Prime Minister and his Cabinet – and then to hold them to account for their actions and, if necessary, to persuade them to adopt a different course of action.
The Leader of the Opposition and the Opposition parties in the House of Representatives are crucial to the success of these central roles of Parliament. This is why the package of reforms to the way the House of Representatives operates, which have been put forward by the Opposition Nationalist Party, are so important.
They signal that the PN may be bloodied by a devastating electoral defeat, but they are unbowed.
And, indeed, that they are extremely conscious of the important responsibility they bear under our parliamentary democracy as a constructive Opposition in pressing proposals to improve Malta’s governance – at a time when many key institutions of government have been exposed as weak.
The PN has already signalled its willingness to participate in the long-promised Convention on the Constitution – Malta’s supreme law – to review and improve the way it operates. It is widely acknowledged that holding the government of the day – of whichever political colour – to account is one of the major lacunae under our Constitution.
The proposal, therefore, that the Prime Minister should appear before Parliament each week to take parliamentary questions (on the lines of the constitutional convention in the Westminster House of Commons and other advanced parliamentary democracies) is an exercise in accoun-tability and transparency that is desperately needed.
At a time when the Prime Minister needs to rebuild constitutional bridges, he would rightly be criticised if he failed to recommend the Speaker to introduce this reform.
The immediate appointment of a Commissioner for Standards in Public Life with the independent authority to police an up-to-date Ministerial and Parliamentary Code of Ethics, which spells out unequivocally the behaviour expected of ministers and MPs, is paramount and, again, long overdue.
As is the proposal for a parliamentary select committee to be appointed with responsibility for examining senior government appointments, from the Commissioner of Police and the Commander of the Armed Forces to senior ambassadorial posts and other key appointments, currently solely in the gift of the government.
This will ensure a quality check by Parliament and increase confidence in the selection process by deterring political abuse of the system.
The Opposition’s proposals for reform also embrace a package of good parliamentary housekeeping, ranging from the vital need to give Members of Parliament better research resources, to family-friendly measures to encourage increased female participation in the House, and an examination of the debatable possibility of having full-time MPs.
Holding more frequent debates on private members’ Bills would also give MPs greater scope to introduce legislation that reflects their constituents’ priorities, as happened with the epoch-changing introduction of divorce legislation.
The parliamentary reform plan which the Opposition has drawn up deals with important procedural aspects of the way the House of Representatives functions.
The plan’s aim is to make the House a more effective, more efficient, democratic, relevant, workable and respected body.
The measures the PN has submitted are sensible, imaginative and overdue. They should be care-fully debated, further refined and then adopted.