JPOS has been an MP for 16 years, and he still doesn’t know how the system works

Published: July 4, 2012 at 3:37pm

After doing his damnedest, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando Smith is now upset because he thinks he might be expelled from the Nationalist Party.

He told Malta Today (but more about this in my newspaper column tomorrow):

Pullicino Orlando stressed that “in a democratic society, what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander and that would mean that the 12 government MPs who voted against the divorce bill in Parliament should also be kicked out of the party.”

No, Jeffrey, that’s not how it works. You can’t expel an MP from the party for voting as he or she pleases when there was a free vote.

You, on the other hand, defied the whip. When you vote against the whip, expect the obvious. The whip, in the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy, is there for a reason.

If all votes were free, there would obviously be no whip. Deal with it.




12 Comments Comment

  1. the chemist says:

    Goodbye Jeff. It really wasn’t nice knowing you.

  2. Jo says:

    Thanks Daphne for the sterling work you’re doing. When reading your observations I learn a lot.

    I suggest that as part of next year’s courses AZAD should organise a course about how parliament works and perhaps it could be transmitted on line or even on TV.

    Participation in this course should be a obligatory to a good number of our MPs.

    Even better if the subject is in future included in the school curriculum.

  3. TinaB says:

    Spiteful little twerp.

    This only means that if he goes down he’ll try to bring his colleagues down with him too, if he could.

    He is not going to because his colleagues had done absolutely nothing wrong. His intentions though are enough proof of how dangerous this man really is

  4. Jozef says:

    Oh look, panic.

  5. Village says:

    Jeffrey you should now cross the floor if you are a man.

    Pluck up courage you twit and do what you have to do.

    You have sought temporary glory but you are now getting the repulsion of all the Nationalist electorate and the dejection of all the remaining Maltese.

    A miserable political outcast.

    • Jozef says:

      He cannot get himself to sit behind his ex-wife.

      Back bencher kien u back bencher ikollu jibqa’.

  6. Harry Purdie says:

    It’s gotta be those botox fumes. He’s lost his ability to think.

  7. Another John says:

    It is not that he does not know. It is that he intentionally misleads.

    His political life since the Mistra debacle has been one continuous lie.

    Fortunately for him, most journalists are not fit for purpose when it comes to asking him relevant questions.

  8. P.Zammit says:

    No matter how much he tries, he is no match for you, Daphne.

  9. David says:

    We are no longer a British colony. So must our Parliament still blindly follow the British Parliament rules and practices?

    [Daphne – I despair, David. We don’t “blindly follow the British Parliament rules and practices”. That is the parliament WE HAVE.]

    • David says:

      We can devise our own system. We can also look at other countries and see what rules and practices we can adopt from them which are suited to our country.

      [Daphne – Yes, of course. One can always reinvent the wheel. Why not? With current advances in technology, square wheels might really go.]

      • Angus Black says:

        Since the Labour Party never changes, let’s change the system to suit the Labour Party.

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