In my eyes, the saga for appointing a new party leader to Parliament was a pitiful affair that should never be in a modern democracy. Previous, similar transitions were executed in a more sensible and gentlemanly fashion.

Gentlemen would and could settle things without the need for any governing legal framework to be in place. So, up to now, the nation never felt there was an issue.

But as we all know, the past is no guarantee of the future. What we recently witnessed reflects the particular circumstances of this time and not of yesteryear.  As a result, I believe that the matter has now become one that needs to be formally addressed and resolved.

So let me start the ball rolling.

Malta’s political culture dictates that the leader of a political party also takes up the leadership role for the party’s own parliamentary group. So in my eyes, we should consider this to be normative practice. The first principle.

Democracy is based on the electorate choosing its representatives in Parliament.  The national cycle for Malta is (normally) based on a five-year-term basis. To be in Parliament you need to get elected to it, and we have clear rules governing this. The second principle.

Unfortunately, this five-year cycle does not necessarily coincide with the cycle of who is appointed to occupy the leadership of a political party. As a result, when a non-parliamentarian is appointed as the new party leader, the two principles may easily clash.

The current mechanism does not allow for the smooth and automatic appointment of the newly appointed party leader to Parliament

Normative practice does not allow for the leader of a party not to also be the political leader of the party’s representatives in Parliament. The democratic framework governing elections does not allow for a non-elected individual to occupy a seat in Parliament. So clearly, in determining a solution, we then need to find a balance that respects both.

The first option that comes to my mind is to embrace expected gentlemanly behaviour and what I believe to represent proper etiquette. The outgoing leader is generally expected to step aside to give the new leader the space to act independently of his remnant influence on internal affairs. This requires him to simply vacate his seat and pass the baton to the newly appointed leader, not only at the party level but also at the parliamentary level.

Today it is not an automatic transition, so let us make it so.

Sometimes and in different circumstances, gentlemanly behaviour is not interpreted in the same way by all. So I believe we should also cater for the eventuality that a past leader wants to respect his five-year electoral mandate and continue to sit in Parliament. 

In this scenario, I believe we should not be applying two weights and two measures for different persons. 

It is not good conduct to ‘force’ another member of Parliament to relinquish his electoral mandate in favour of the new party leader.

Even if he does, as we have seen, the current mechanism does not allow for the smooth and automatic appointment of the newly appointed party leader to Parliament in his stead. So a new mechanism must be designed at law.

If we accept principle one above to hold true, then there should be no difficulty in accepting that it should be democratically acceptable to create a mechanism for the leader of a party to be directly appointed to Parliament without the need for direct election or co-option mechanisms to come into play.  

Its application, however, leaves us with one issue to resolve – ascertaining the continued respect of the expressed will of the electorate in terms of respective proportional representation in Parliament. 

To address and resolve this issue, I propose that if the leader of the government/Opposition is appointed to Parliament using this latter model, then at each and every session, one member of the respective side will be declared as a non-voting participant to the parliamentary session. 

In view of his democratic mandate, he will still be able to actively participate in the debate. However, when it comes to taking a vote, he will not have this right to respect the electorate-defined proportionality of parliamentary representation.

If we as a country accept the notion that the leader of the biggest parties is the same incumbent as the leader of the government or Opposition, then I believe the proposals presented can easily be accepted conceptually, on the basis of principles found to represent the spirit of democracy.

David Camilleri is a Consultant specialising in public administration.