So who is going to be the leader of the Opposition?

I want to be leader of the Opposition

Parliament will be convened as soon as the by-elections are over and done with, which means way before the Labour Party elects Alfred Sant’s lapdog as its leader on 5 June.

So who will be the leader of the Opposition? Ah, that’s up to Edward Fenech Adami, president of Malta. The leader of the Opposition is not automatically the leader of the Labour Party – oh dear, Freudian slip there; I mean that he is not automatically the leader of the party whose MPs take up most of the space on the Opposition benches.

For a start, you can be leader of a political party without having a seat in parliament, as Harry Vassallo knows only too well. But you cannot be leader of the Opposition without a seat in parliament, because the term ‘Opposition’ has no relevance outside the parliamentary context. This means that when the Poodle is elected on 5 June, he will not immediately assume the role of leader of the Opposition. He will have to wait until some sucker MP has his arm twisted into resigning his seat, unless the Poodle’s master is going to be a man and not a chicken and do the necessary himself.

What’s going to happen during the Interregnum, then? I am all agog to find out. The Constitution dictates that the leader of the Opposition, like the prime minister, is chosen by the president. Nowadays, this has become a mere formality, because they are the leaders of the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party, either one way or the other. But when parliament is convened, the Labour Party will be without a leader, so who is the president going to choose?

There are those who are saying that though Sant has Irrevocably Resigned from the leadership, he hasn’t also resigned as leader of the Opposition, because that must be done formally in writing to the president. Well, I stand to be corrected, but that sounds like rubbish. Sant ceased to be leader of the Opposition when parliament was dissolved and the election campaign began. We haven’t had an Opposition for around two months, and when parliament is convened, it will not be Sant again because his constitutional status is now just that of an ordinary MP.

You can argue that we haven’t had a proper Opposition since 1987 (or 1996-1998) and you would be right. But the Opposition, if only on paper, requires a leader. The Constitution demands that. So now let’s see what happens.