Today a crucial vote on an Opposition motion will be taken in Parliament. The matter is by far much more serious than any issue of controversy during the last PN administration up to 2013.

Yesterday the Nationalist Party invited all members of Parliament including government MPs to vote in favour of the Opposition motion, not an infrequent occurrence in every democratic Parliament around the world.

On the 11th May 2015, in the aftermath of the general election, the Telegraph reported “. . . . And this Parliament follows from the most rebellious in post-war history. Government MPs over the last five years voted against their party line in more than a third of Commons divisions (35 per cent). That easily beat the previous record of 28 per cent, held by the Blair/Brown government from 2005-2010. There were a total of 110 occasions during 2010-2015 when seven or more Conservative MPs voted against the party line. . . Of the top seven most rebellious MPs in the last Parliament, all have been re-elected.”

Probably the recent Brexit Parliament debacle proved to be even more rebellious.

Yesterday was a milestone for the Nationalist Party, a very important day in the last decade, where the party called on members of Parliament including government MPs to act in the same way I (and a few others) had acted in the past. Back then the party had, possibly, reacted in a way which was slightly incorrect and which consequently left an unfortunate aftermath on the same party.

Back then, apart from the fact that I had taken critical stances, I had also prescribed solutions to the problems. As a Nationalist MP both within party structures and in Parliament I conceived, formulated and proposed, from the backbench, a holistic constitutional and justice reform -www.riformagustizzja.com – and a Law on Party Finance, which still dominates the political agenda till this very day.

With the benefit of hindsight, an objective perspective and the passage of time it is clear that the shortcomings which constitute the merit of today’s vote are far more serious than those that ever occurred when I was a Member of Parliament, and therefore the responsibility that comes with the vote is much more onerous.

In this country, there has long been felt the need for a change as to how politics should be conducted. I repeat what I have always believed, that certain aspects of constitutional reform could be implemented through laws while others that regard a political culture and nature which cannot be translated into laws, but that one, in this case, a member of Parliament, must live.

This is a golden opportunity for members of Parliament to push the national interest before the partisan one. 

As I said in Parliament on the 12th June 2012, and this applied then, today and always- “One of the areas in which I feel I have given a valid contribution in the last four years that I have been in Parliament is about the true role of Members of Parliament.”

“I consider that there is a need to understand better what this role entails. The significance of the role of a member of Parliament is not as a delegate of the party, but as a representative of the people, elected on the party ticket. There lies a difference between a party delegate and a representative of the people elected on a party ticket. I have always insisted that a Member of Parliament represents the people within a party structure, in the name of the party, but ultimately is a representative of the people as a whole, not just his party.”

What I said in Parliament on the 29th March 2011 in relation to the role of scrutiny of Parliament on the Government also still applies now as it did then- “In the parliamentary system, a system of checks and balances… you have a mechanism where Parliament itself acts as scrutiny on the executive where the executive must give an account of its’ actions continuously, must give an account of what it is doing to the same Parliament which ultimately represents the whole nation in the widest sense possible.”

Finally, one hopes that the national interest triumphs over the partisan loyalties in today’s vote, also considering that the shortcomings denounced in the present Opposition motion are way more severe than those lamented in any controversial issue before 2013 and therefore with huge consistency I cannot but agree with the call of the Opposition that members of Parliament vote by their conscience and in the national interest.

Dr Franco Debono is a practising criminal lawyer and a former Nationalist MP.

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