Goverment and Opposition: the only time they cooperate is when they want to fox the electorate

Published: June 3, 2011 at 10:22am

Yesterday I wrote that it is being mooted already that the parties collude in hiding from the electorate how individual MPs voted, by using the routine system in which the Speaker assumes the bill to have been carried, in the absence of a request for a division (roll-call of votes) from somebody who voted with the minority (No).

For more details, see my post ‘Some notes about the vote’.

Now some MPs on both sides of the house have confirmed that this is in fact the plan under discussion, though the party whips will not be drawn on the matter.

Both the government and the Opposition have problems with MPs who wish to vote No and others who wish to vote Yes but don’t want to be seen to be doing so.

Once again, I must say that this is exactly what they did with their collusion in dead silence on Libya, when our European neighbours had very public and even parliamentary debates on the issue. Now the government and the Opposition are working on ways to, effectively, undermine the proper function of parliament and cheat the electorate of important information.

One Labour MP, obviously pleased with this magnificent plan, described it to a newspaper as ‘an intelligent move’. “If we’re going to be intelligent about it, we won’t call for a division,” he told Malta Today (it pains me to mention the name, but I have to).

Another MP told the same journalist that any such agreement would be “in the best interest of both sides of the House, given that both government and Opposition need to keep their factions united and not split”.

It’s amazing, isn’t it?

You can see the thinking which underpins their reasoning and their strategy: the electorate doesn’t count. MPs are not answerable to the electorate. The electorate does not need to know how MPs vote after a referendum.

Our MPs are concerned with what is in the best interest of the House when they are they to look to the best interest of the electorate.

It reminds me of a line from Russell Crowe’s Robin Hood: “We fight among ourselves. But when France invades, we are all Englishmen.” Goverment and Opposition MPs are forever at each other’s throat, but when the people have spoken (the bastards) then they pull together against the people.

We don’t care how they vote on rent regulation. But we need to know how individual MPs vote after a referendum result and other crucial votes. It was important to know, to use the most screamingly obvious example, that George Vella, current shadow minister for foreign affairs, voted against the EU accession treaty.

I don’t agree at all with the stance taken by Adrian Vassallo and Austin Gatt in full defiance of the referendum result. They showed no respect for the people’s decision but, in a perverse way, they have also showed more respect to the electorate than most others in their party have done.

They have told us in no uncertain terms, without any of the ridiculous and pathetic prevarication that others have shown, what they intend to do.

In a strange way, I respect this behaviour more than I do the behaviour of those MPs who wish to vote Yes in accordance with the referendum result but who are too cowardly to stand up and say so.

Now we have to contend, it seems, with the 60+ lot of them (bar Gatt and Vassallo and those who have said they will absent themselves) chasing around finding ways to hide their vote. The only time the government and the Opposition are able to cooperate, it seems, is in foxing the electorate.




11 Comments Comment

  1. La Redoute says:

    Why is it that sneaky, underhanded behaviour is invariably described as ‘intelligent’?

    Real intelligence is something else altogether but those who do not possess it are unable to see that.

    [Daphne – Because in Malta, ‘intelligenti’ and ‘wajs’ do not mean ‘intelligent’ and ‘wise’. The real meaning – sneaky and underhanded cunning – is lost in translation. That is because it is a southern Mediterranean value, and not an Anglo-Saxon one.]

    • ciccio2011 says:

      There is no Maltese equivalent of the word “intelligent” which has a Latin origin.
      The Maltese word with closest meaning is “ha**ej.”

  2. lino says:

    Daphne, I have posted a few contributions in favour of a free vote in parliament, but I contend that MPs are to be consistent with their prior positions on this issue, hence as you say we MUST know who’s voting and how; if that’s not the case, I am with you to extend the Arab Spring westwards.

    [Daphne – It’s not me who’s on about the Arab spring. It’s Evarist. We’re in Malta. We have other options and don’t need to camp out in front of the palace or demonstrate in public spaces as we had to do when Evarist’s friends were in power.]

  3. Interested Bystander says:

    For me, every day in this island paradise is a journey into the fantastic.

  4. ciccio2011 says:

    As I see it, since the MPs are going to hide their individual vote from the public, we are not going to know who, after the vote, has a clean conscience, and who does not.
    So much for their conscience bull. Do you think God and the bishops will know how they voted?

  5. ciccio2011 says:

    Oh, I have another question about this: Since the MPs’ invidual vote will not be published, does this mean that Marie Louise Coleiro Preca’s descision that she will not stand again for Parliament in 2013, as communicated to Joseph Muscat on 31 May, was a hasty one?

    • Mario Mercieca says:

      I think there is more than meets the eye in ML Coleiro Preca’s decision not to stand for election. If Muscat is saying to his MPs that they have a free vote and then exerting undue pressure on them to vote Yes I would be the first to rebel.

      I think there are also other issues which made her take the decisions.

  6. jozef says:

    Actually there is a word for intelligence: hazen.

    eg; il-hazen ta’ mohhu,

    [Daphne – Hazen does not translate as intelligence. It translates as cunning.]

  7. jozef says:

    I see…

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