Speaker Michael Frendo yesterday said an assistant clerk of the House had expressed doubts over the vote of Labour MP Justyne Caruana in Parliament last Thursday night, leaving him with no alternative but to listen to the recording himself.
Dr Frendo told The Sunday Times the clerk had remarked that it "seemed to him" he had heard Dr Caruana say 'no' instead of 'yes' shortly before the declaration by Foreign Minister Tonio Borg that the Labour MP had voted against the opposition motion condemning the award of a contract related to the Delimara power station extension.
Dr Frendo said: "At that point I allowed the vote to continue and took no action, but when Tonio Borg later alleged the same thing, I thought it would be better to suspend the session and listen to the tape."
This decision prompted the Labour Party to walk out of Parliament in protest. Dr Frendo still listened to the recording, and after concluding that it was not clear, decided to order a re-vote which the government won 35-0 since the opposition was no longer present.
The Foreign Minister had called the Labour MP's vote into question immediately after Parliamentary Secretary Mario Galea mistakenly voted in favour of the opposition motion, creating a furore in Parliament.
However, Labour leader Joseph Muscat yesterday kept up his criticism over how the vote was handled, saying there was absolutely no doubt over how Dr Caruana had voted.
"We had sound engineers clean the recording and Dr Caruana can clearly be heard saying yes," he said. The recording was aired on One TV's news bulletin yesterday evening. "The Speaker should have done what we did if the clerk's assertion put him in doubt," Dr Muscat said, even though his MPs walked out before the Speaker had an opportunity to listen to the recording.
The Labour leader again insisted that Dr Borg's claim was fabricated in order to deflect attention from the fact that a government MP had voted in favour of the opposition motion.
"They resorted to a lie to derail the proceedings and the Speaker, rather than follow procedure, and that is not acceptable," Dr Muscat said when asked why Labour did not wait for the Speaker's ruling.
He insisted that according to established Parliamentary procedure the Speaker had to call the vote as it was taken down, with a majority for the opposition.
"The Speaker did not follow the rules with regard to this vote... now if the rules need to be changed, we can discuss changing them in future but everyone knew the rules and the Speaker should have called the result of the vote."
In a press conference last Friday, Dr Muscat accused the Speaker of "being led by remote control by the Prime Minister". However, yesterday he would not be drawn on whether he still had faith in him.
"This is not a question of having faith. We are very disappointed with his decision."
When asked to comment on Labour's charge, Dr Frendo insisted that he acted according to conscience and in the best interest of fairness and democracy. "In the situation I was in, I used the standing order that states there should be a re-vote - as simple as that."
However, he added: "The system is wrong and I will not allow it to go on. I will not allow a vote to take place in that way again because I don't want another instance where there is a doubt over a vote. It's not good."
When contacted, Dr Borg responded to The Sunday Times with a statement standing by his position.
"What happened last Thursday was a perfect example of Old Labour at its worst. Labour wanted to win the vote by hook or by crook; having realised that the PN parliamentary group was unanimously against the opposition's motion, Labour, in a most unfair way, tried to exploit a temporary mistake made by a PN member which was immediately rectified," he said.
He said that in the uproar, "reliable information was passed on" to him about Dr Caruana's vote and he decided to raise the issue for verification, adding that it was unfair not to allow any MP to rectify a mistake.
After the ruling, he said, Nationalist MPs voted against the motion and "Labour should come to terms with reality and act responsibly rather than trying to give the erroneous impression that the will of the minority had prevailed."