MPs are answerable only to their constituents

Without going into the merits of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s case, I believe that those who are calling for his resignation do not fully understand what they are doing, and that resignation in these circumstances would create a dangerous precedent in our democracy.

Their misconceptions and misunderstandings are all the fruit of their belief, so far as I can gather, that members of parliament are representatives of political parties, rather than representatives of the people. In parliament, MPs do not represent their political parties, even if they are elected on a party ticket. They represent their constituents. This means the people in their electoral constituency and, more precisely, the people who actually voted for them. MPs owe their primary loyalty to their constituents and not to their party or party leader. Indeed, if something that their party does or proposes goes against the interests of their constituents, they are obliged to oppose it, whichever side of the house they happen to be sitting. Because our system of representative democracy has been diluted by party dominance, this fact is often overlooked or deemed unimportant.

Whatever the merits of the case, whether he is in the wrong or in the right, nobody can ask Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando to resign except his constituents. The only mechanism for this is a general election. In 2013, Pullicino Orlando’s constituents will let him know whether they wish to have him carry on representing their interests in parliament or not. Until then, he is not only entitled to stay on in parliament, but he is actually obliged to do so, because he owes it to the people in not one but two constituencies who put him there. Those who imagine that it is a dereliction of duty not to resign have got things the wrong way round. It is the resignation of a parliamentary seat that is a dereliction of duty. Once people put you in parliament to represent their interests, you cannot up and say, before your term is up: “Oh stuff this. I’m going home.”

The prime minister, the opposition party, Alternattiva Demokratika and what purports to be public opinion have absolutely no part to play in this and no say in the matter. It is between Pullicino Orlando and his constituents. He is a member of parliament, the representative of a group of people who voted for him to represent them. He is not a party apparatchik or factotum. Despite being elected on the party ticket, his seat is not in the gift of the party.

The assertion that the prime minister should demand the resignation of an MP is ridiculous, as well as dangerous. The Constitution of Malta specifies that the resignation of an MP must be made in writing ‘under his own hand’ to the Speaker of the House – not to the party leader or the prime minister. This is because it is the Speaker, and not the party leaders, who are ‘in charge of’ – to put it like that – members of parliament. It is the Speaker who is responsible for investigating a situation which might render an MP’s seat untenable, and not the MP’s party leader.

This is not a piece written in defence of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, but a piece written in defence of democracy and against the growth of dangerous ideas that threaten it. One of these dangerous ideas is that seats can be given to and taken away from MPs by political parties and ‘public opinion’ in any other way than through a general election every five years, or by bringing to bear the provisions and sub-articles spelled out in articles 54 and 55 of the Constitution of Malta.

The prime minister, as leader of the Nationalist Party, can demand the resignation of Pullicino Orlando only from the party and not from parliament. Resignation from the party does not equate with resignation from parliament. If an MP resigns from his party, he will still keep his seat – just as Wenzu Mintoff did in 1989, when he resigned from the Labour Party, kept his seat, and joined AD instead, with the result that AD had a parliamentary seat for three years until the 1992 general election.

MPs can be kept in line by the party whip or by their understanding that if they wish to be re-elected on the party ticket, they should toe the line and keep the party happy. But it is only their own wishes and desire for survival that keep them doing this. There is nothing to stop an MP – except the voluntary factors just mentioned – from voting against his party line. Mintoff famously did this in 1998, leading to the collapse of Sant’s government.

An MP’s seat is his or her own, and not the party’s. He or she can pick up that seat (not literally, of course) and take it across the floor. If it is up to our MPs to keep their party happy to ensure re-election and survival within the party, then it is also up to the parties to keep their MPs happy to ensure that they do not cross the floor, vote against the party, or find themselves forced into a corner where they use leverage or weight-pulling. Sant learned this to his cost in 1998.

The resignation of an MP is not in the same category as the resignation of a cabinet minister, and quite clearly, ‘public opinion’ and the two political parties that are not in government are confusing the two separate issues. The prime minister’s office, on the other hand – you would expect Lawrence Gonzi to understand the democratic issues, the Constitution and the meaning of representative democracy – has issued a statement pointing out that the seats of MPs are matters for the electorate to decide upon, and not for the government. The prime minister can ask cabinet ministers to resign from their post of minister, because it is in his gift, but he cannot ask an MP to resign his or her seat, because that seat is not in his gift.

It is fatuous of the Labour Party and Alternattiva Demokratika to decry Pullicino Orlando’s presence in parliament – which has not even been convened yet, in any case – when as political parties they should understand the meaning of representative democracy. They are fine ones to talk, in any case, given that both have rather large beams in their own eyes. The resignation demands of other sectors of society, or at least those which pretend to be coming from other sectors of society, are in the large part the result of ignorance about the Constitutional status of an MP. My instantaneous but considered reaction to these calls for Pullicino Orlando’s resignation is this: how dare these people demand that he resign, when he does not represent them and they are not the ones who elected him? The only people who have a say in the matter are the ones who will be saying what they think in 2013. Until then, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando stays, whatever he did or is deemed to have done. Who are we to pass judgement on the electoral choices of others, or to say that they have no right to be represented by Pullicino Orlando, if that is what they want?

That’s what I mean about dangerous thinking. The Constitution is very clear about who may and may not be allowed to stand for election to parliament or retain a seat once there. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando falls into none of these categories. Nor do ‘honour’ or ‘integrity’ come into it. I would consider Pullicino Orlando to have integrity if he refuses to resign his seat and abdicate his responsibility to his constituents even in the face of such harsh, vicious and entirely disproportionate criticism. If he resigns his seat, he will be left in peace – but that is taking the easy way out.

There is no scope for the sacrifice of token lambs here. Also, it is hypocritical of the Labour Party to use this case to obscure the fact that it has failed to police its own MPs for their shortcomings and wrong-doings. At least one notorious case that made the news in the penultimate week of the campaign involves two MPs who were ministers in Sant’s cabinet at the time, one of whom has the nerve to now put himself forward for the party leadership. As for AD and its mealy-mouthed holier-than-thou pronouncements, I think it is opportune to point out that it is the political party whose leader faces a two-year prison term for refusing to comply with the law despite years of attempts at persuading him to do so, and who had the ruddy cheek to put in a plea for a presidential pardon while criticising others for doing the same.

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I disagree completely with the stance taken by those who say that Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando could have cost the Nationalist Party the election, and that the responsibility for the loss of thousands of votes lies fairly and squarely at his door. This is tunnel-vision thinking and not lateral thinking. The allegation that Pullicino Orlando lied came far too late in the game to make significant numbers of people change their minds about voting PN. Most people missed it, and only found out after voting. Those who were going around cursing Pullicino Orlando before voting day were the ones most concerned that the Nationalist Party should win; they were cursing him because they thought he might scuttle the ship, and not because they were disillusioned with the Nationalist Party.

Pullicino Orlando may have caused the loss of some votes in the last couple of days of the campaign – and I must stress the ‘some’ – but let’s not overlook the fact that he pulled in significant numbers of votes, probably enough to make a difference to the outcome, by confronting Sant in the PBS studios. He exposed him as a bully and a coward whose reaction to the confrontation was to literally run away, after demanding that the police are called to protect him from the questions of a fellow MP. As he cowered beneath the Crosscraft studio set, we saw Sant for what he was: not prime ministerial material. My usually reliable gut instinct tells me that in that moment, as thousands of people across the country watched the showdown on television, the anti-Sant vote (which is not the same as the pro-PN vote) crystallised and hardened.

I have no doubt at all that the PBS debacle was instrumental in securing victory for the Nationalist Party, and that is why I gave Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando my number-one vote on March 8 despite the doubts I had about the Mistra case. It was my way of thanking him for playing such a great part in ensuring that I wouldn’t wake up the next day to find the ghastly Alfred Sant as prime minister. With that single act of audacity in the PBS studios, he did more than anybody else on the Nationalist Party list for my electoral district to keep Sant out. That’s why I voted for him and that’s why, despite everything that has happened since, I object most strongly to anybody telling me that I do not have the right to be represented in parliament by the person I voted for. To them I have just one thing to say, and it’s short and sweet: mind your own business. If he’s not your MP, you have no say in the matter.

This article is published in The Malta Independent today.