Unfortunately, the persisting controversy surrounding the Speaker’s use of the casting vote to defeat the Opposition’s no-confidence motion may undermine the political and institutional clarity which the Constitution intended to achieve in such a delicate and vital issue as a vote of no confidence in a government.
The vote of no confidence is a very special procedure that the Constitution uses to establish without a doubt Parliament’s decision to remove a democratically-elected government.
This assumes particular importance in Malta because, as from 1987, to avoid the repetition of the infamous “perverse result” at the 1981 election, when Labour governed for five whole years against the will of the majority, elections are not won by the number of seats elected from the 13 districts but by the No. 1 preferences of all of the candidates of a political party.
The Constitution in fact refers to the “absolute majority party” as the party that wins more than one half of all of the valid votes of first preference votes and which is assured to govern with the absolute majority of all the seats in the House.
The same applies to a party with the relative majority of all the No. 1 votes in a Parliament of only two parties. The present Gonzi government won the relative majority of all the No. 1 votes, albeit by a whisker, and the Constitution avoided another perverse result by adding four extra seats to give the Nationalist Party the majority in the House of Representatives.
Democratic legitimacy demands that the absolute majority of seats given by the electorate may only be removed by the absolute majority of all of the MPs having the right to vote on the motion. The Constitution, therefore, leaves nothing to accident in a vote of no confidence.
Firstly, the motion has to be specific to the issue of no confidence in the government. The motion is not mixed with any other issue, which may confuse or even dilute the clarity of the vote of no confidence.
Not only. The motion requires the support of “the majority of all the members of the House” and not simply the majority of the members of the House “present and voting”. Constitutional lawyers refer to them as either the absolute majority of all of the MPs or as the simple majority of those MPs present in the House and voting.
The use of the word “absolute” is not accidental. It is when the majority mathematically, “absolutely”, cannot be defeated, not even if all of the opposing MPs combined together to vote against the motion.
So, if all the MPs numbered 10, the absolute majority would be of six because the combination of the remaining four votes can never beat the majority of six votes. The verdict is decisive and final on reaching at least six votes in favour of the motion, since the remaining four votes may only add to that majority but never defeat it.
What if only four happen to be present and voting? There is not even the need to call for a vote because even if they all vote in favour they are nowhere near the magic number of six.
It should be clear, therefore, that any MP who abstains when an absolute majority is needed, as Franco Debono did, that abstention represents a deliberate obstacle in regard to those trying to win at least six out of the 10 votes.
This brings us to the Speaker’s casting vote. With 34 declaring no confidence and 34 declaring confidence in the government, there was no need for the Speaker to use the casting vote because the number required was of 35 in a House with 69MPs having the right to vote. In a formal vote of no confidence, the Speaker’s vote is not decisive be- cause a tie in votes certainly means that the absolute majority of all the MPs cannot possibly be reached.
Can there ever be a tie of 35 votes in favour with 35 against, when only 69 MPs have an original vote? According to my calculator, 35 or more remains the number that absolutely can never be overcome by the combined votes of all of the other 34 even if all present and voting.
On the other hand, any tie in the voting, starting from 34-34 and ending with 1-1, would all fall short of the absolute majority of 35. In reality and by definition, a draw means precisely the lack of any majority, be it simple, absolute or two-thirds!
An authoritative voice within the Labour parliamentary group, Owen Bonnici, has clearly stated that the Speaker had to declare the motion of no confidence not approved because the numbers required by the Constitution were missing. This clearly means that there was no draw.
That being the case, there seems to be a consensus in the making that the motion was defeated absolutely and that, if anything, the Speaker’s casting vote was more of a formality than the use of a decisive vote that, after all, is what the casting vote is all about.