The government yesterday re-jected an Opposition motion to revoke a legal notice setting up a local enforcement agency.

The Opposition demanded a division and the vote will now be taken on Monday.

PN Whip David Agius said changes to local government legislation should be made in consultation with the Opposition adding that the legal notice sounded the death knell for the autonomy of democratically-elected councillors. The government would be appointing a CEO on the basis of a position of trust without consulting the Opposition. The consultative board was also handpicked by the minister.

Local Councils Parliamentary Secretary Stefan Buontempo denied there had been no consultation with the Opposition pointing out that even though the PN’s proposals were sent 47 days after the closure of the consultation period, the government still considered them.

The reform was an electoral promise and voters had given Labour a mandate to do it.

Jason Azzopardi (PN) said the legal notice would add a new layer of bureaucracy and distance decision-making from the locality, thereby undermining subsidiarity. Winding up the debate on the Opposition motion, Mr Agius said that, in 2011, when Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was leader of the Opposition he had declared that the enforcement system was a racket. The new system would not remove such a racket, he said.

If the government believed that Malta belonged to everyone, it should accept the Opposition’s proposal to seek agreement on the setting up of the agency, he concluded.