Members of Parliament had to change their seating layout in the new Parliament chamber. Both the Labour and the Nationalist parties took a different approach to where their deputies sit.
The new Parliament chamber in the Renzo Piano building is much more intimate and less spar conducive than the old Westminster-style hall in the Grand Master’s Palace.
Opponents do not face each other but neither do they sit in a continental-style hemicycle either. It’s a special Maltese hybrid: a sort of horseshoe shape.
This means that the layout of the new chamber – which has 81 seats, the maximum number of MPs that can be elected – allows for more flexibility. Should the number of MPs elected by both parties be very close, there is a good chance government and Opposition representatives would be sitting next to each other.
So what new seating arrangements were made?
The government side kept to the same modus operandi: seating by seniority. Government whip Godfrey Farrugia said: “We stuck to the old system. The Prime Minister sits on the front row, flanked by the most senior ministers. In the rows behind him sit ministers and parliamentary secretaries and the rest of the MPs according to how long they have been in Parliament.”
The whip sits behind the leader of the house, Deputy Prime Minister Louis Grech.
“It was decided that we retain the same system so that everyone always has the same desk and the same microphone,” he said.
The Nationalist Opposition went for a less conservative approach. The leader, the whip, the two deputy leaders and the general secretary sit on the front bench.
“The rest is free seating,” notes PN whip David Agius.
“This new chamber allows us to blur the difference between front and backbenchers: we are all one team,” he said, adding that the way the PN shadow ministries were assigned meant that Opposition MPs had to work in clusters. “Our portfolios necessitate that we work in groups, so free seating enables us to sit next to each other in the chamber and be more productive.”
Gozitan MP Giovanna Debono, who resigned from the PN parliamentary group when her husband was arraigned in connection with the ‘works for votes’ allegations, sits at the very back row, on the last seat on the Opposition side.
Mr Agius said it was not necessary for MPs to sit on the same desk because their names and microphones were electronically operated. “MPs use an electronic card and their name comes up on whichever desk they are sitting on. When you press the mike [button to speak], the camera will automatically zoom in on whoever is speaking,” Mr Agius said. What happens if MPs forget their card? “That won’t be a problem,” Mr Agius said. “There are spare blank ones.”
What is positive is that the public is closer to Parliament and Parliament is closer to the media
As the desks are not that big, MPs do not leave their belongings there and instead make use of lockers in two sleek common rooms: one for each party.
Opposition MPs are encouraged to use the high-tech-equipped common room. Dr Farrugia, however, bemoaned the lack of sufficient individual offices which, he said, was “turning out to be a bit of a headache”.
While all government ministers have their own offices, there are not enough rooms for the seven parliamentary secretaries and the six committee chairpersons. “That’s 13 people who have to share four offices,” he said. “I am doing miracles,” he said, noting he had worked out a rotation system for them and even gave up his office to be used as a private room when need be.
“It’s true that our executive is quite large... but committee chairpersons are high officials in the parliamentary set up and they have always been there so they ought to have been catered for,” Dr Farrugia said.
The previous situation was better he said, because “everyone had an office”. “What is positive is that the public is closer to Parliament and Parliament is closer to the media,” he said.
Mr Agius said the parliamentary group was having talks to update the Standing Orders. This would include shortening the duration of speeches from the present 40 minutes, deciding whether MPs should have their honoraria deducted if they did not show up for parliamentary sessions and whether the Prime Minister’s question time should be introduced.
“We are trying to update them to make them more relevant to today’s society,” Mr Agius said, adding that for the time being there were no plans to change the dates and times of parliamentary sittings: it convenes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 6pm to 9.30pm.
The building, so far, lacks a bar. So what about corridor politics? Where are the discussions over tipple taking place? Dr Farrugia said: “Well, there will be a bar in future, close to the tunnel where there was the Yellow Garage before... there will also be a library and another committee room over there.”
Until then, however, MPs are happy to make do with a coffee machine in an open space in the corridor behind the chamber.
“In the old building, the coffee machine in the corridor was always more popular than the bar and now we have a bigger open space with comfortable chairs,” Dr Farrugia pointed out.
He said MPs from both camps mingled regularly “and tease each other a lot” over cups of coffee.
Meanwhile, he said, the flowered plants he and his MP partner, Marlene, took with them to the chamber on inauguration day were flourishing. The plants, a symbolical reference to Oliver Friggieri book Fil-parlament ma jikbrux fjuri, are in the whip’s room. “I water them every week and I hope they’ll keep on growing,” he quipped.