Franco Debono this evening fired an angry tirade at the government, hitting out at the fact that more amedments had been moved to the Budget Measures Bill than there were clauses.
He also pointed out that there was no one on the government benches other than the Finance Minister and Gozitan MP Frederick Azzopardi.
The amendments were presented to the Opposition yesterday and started being debated when the House resolved itself in committee this evening.
Sounding angry, Dr Debono said the House had not taken a vote for three months and it had taken a break of three weeks over Easter. Yet, now, four times as many amendments had been presented as there were clauses, without time for proper discussion.
"This is not the way Parliament should be run. Where is the prime minister? I expected him to be here. Is he somewhere else replying to people on the internet?" Dr Debono asked.
"We are continuing to ridicule Parliament and I am sorry there is a self-appointed technocrat who runs everything, and that is why politicians are losing respect because this technocrat and his friends from St Edwards do what they want," Dr Debono said.
He said he had sought the prime minister within the precincts of the House but could not find him. Dr Debono said he was a Nationalist more than all the MPs put together 10 times over, but they should be in the House.
He demanded an explanation, insisted there was not enough time for these details to be considered in detail.
Opposition whip Mr Mizzi agreed about too many amendments having been presented, but said the Opposition would respect the agreement for the vote to be taken this evening.
Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said moving amendments was not unusual and for most cases they were debated in committee of the House.
Dr Debono said it was not the practice for so many amendments to be presented at one go for what was practically an immediate debate.
Opposition finance spokesman Charles Mangion said the problem was that the amendments all had to be debated by this evening.
Dr Debono said he was requesting an explanation for the record, because far too many amendments had been presented and they could not be properly considered. This was not seriousness.
The Nationalist MP was interrupted several times by the chairman, Censu Galea, who told him he was not in order, but Dr Debono insisted he was in order and was demanding an explanation.
After so many months, the government had known for at least two weeks that this Bill was coming up. Surely he could have presented the amendments before.
Mr Fenech said the timetable was fixed by the House Business Committee and the debate on second reading had taken very long. Furthermore, in the past no MP ever showed interest in this stage of the debate. Had Dr Debono or anyone shown interest he would have handed him the amendments before. He said that 'next year' he would present him amendments earlier if he showed such interest. Should the debate need to be extended to 2 a.m. he was not against doing so, he said. But it was not unusual to have many amendments.
Dr Debono said that in the past several sittings were allocated for this stage of the debate for the amendments to be properly considered. In this case, months were wasted and now everything was being rushed through.
The debate then continued.