The uproar over the lack of parliamentary attendance by some MPs “requires serious consideration and not just media hype” according to the Nationalist Party.
While insisting that the PN did not condone absenteeism, a spokesman said the current situation went to the very heart of a problem that has long persisted, which is the need to improve how Parliament functions.
A broad exercise carried out by The Times this week showed that 12 MPs missed more than half of the sittings since January. Labour MP Adrian Vassallo topped the list missing 90 per cent of the sittings, followed closely by Nationalist parliamentary assistant Stephen Spiteri who missed 81 per cent.
Evidently caught between two stools, the PN and the Labour Party tried to walk a tight-rope when asked to react to the controversy involving their errant MPs.
When asked whether they will be addressing the issue and how, both parties failed to give concrete answers.
The PN spokesman shifted the focus on the need to reform the current system, adding it was elected with an electoral commitment to strengthen the role of Parliament.
“It is for this reason that our party proposed the establishment of an ad hoc parliamentary committee to deal precisely with this issue,” the PN spokesman said, lamenting that the committee’s work has been stalled for more than a year because of the Labour Party’s decision to withdraw from it last year after a controversial vote on the Delimara power station contract.
“We welcome the recent statement of the Opposition leader to reconsider his party’s withdrawal from this committee and we are open to ways that would help us reactivate its workings as soon as possible,” he said.
The spokesman said that one of the issues the committee had to consider was the role of MPs and whether their parliamentary job should remain on a part-time basis like it was today.
“The PN has no predetermined position on this issue but is open-minded to consider any reform of the existing model as long as the objective of the strengthening of Parliament can be achieved,” the spokesman said.
The Labour Party partially defended MPs by saying that their work was not exclusive to Parliament. “Every MP is elected to serve his constituents in the best possible way in Parliament.
This includes but is not exclusive to attending Parli-ament. Every MP is responsible for his behaviour,” a spokesman for the PL said. Welcoming this newspaper’s reporting of the issue and describing it as an “exercise in transparency”, the spokesman said the party was convinced the electorate would give it due importance.
“The party has its own transparency mechanism and publishes the attendance records of MPs in its own general con-ference publication every year,” the spokesman said.
ksansone@timesofmalta.com