PN MPs walk out of Parliament after speaker refuses request for urgent debate

The Nationalist Party’s MPs walked out of Parliament on Monday evening after speaker Anġlu Farrugia refused its request for an urgent parliamentary debate on the publication – or lack thereof – of the damning conclusions of the hospitals inquiry led by magistrate Gabriella Vella which is leading to the arraignment of former prime minister Joseph Muscat.

An acrimonious exchange took place as opposition leader Grech presented the request under Standing Order 13, which allows house business to be adjourned “for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance.”

Grech said that it was motivated by the fact that Prime Minister Robert Abela had abusively gained access to the report while the public was being denied it.

The request was strongly opposed by a seemingly agitated Abela, who pulled no punches in his intervention.

After an interjection by Nationalist MP Karol Aquilina, he even went on to imply that his brother, Repubblika’s honorary president Robert Aquilina, had gained undue access to the inquiry when it was still in process. In doing so, naturally, he continued to cast aspersions on the integrity of magistrate Vella, keeping up the attacks that have earned him heavy criticism in recent days, including from the Chamber of Advocates.

Although the PM did not mention the activist by name, he clearly referred to Aquilina’s visit to Muscat’s home when it was being searched in January 2022, in connection with the inquiry.

“The true issue isn’t who has access to the procès-verbal today,” Abela said, in an intervention heavily peppered with legalisms, “but who knew what the procès-verbal would contain before the inquiry was over.”

After Grech mocked Abela’s continuous, and somewhat conspiratorial, references to the “establishment,” Abela resorted to another argument he commonly invokes when under fire: make insinuations about internal divisions within the PN.

“If someone asks me who the establishment is, I tell them to ask Adrian Delia,” he said, in reference to Delia’s ouster as PN leader in 2020 and his replacement with Grech.

This tactic appears to have backfired this time round, however, with Delia invoking a point of order – wrongly, as frequently happens when MPs wish to interrupt – to provide his answer.

“He asked me to describe who the establishment is,” Delia said.

“And I reply that the establishment is the one that claimed to give health to the Maltese and stole it,” he said, referring to Labour’s electoral slogan Sagha lill-Maltin.”

“The one which stole three public hospitals, and the one which committed the greatest fraud in Maltese history.”

Speaker Anġlu Farrugia repeatedly insisted that Delia cut his intervention short, before his frustrations boiled over and he switched off his mic, and the sitting was suspended to allow him to deliberate on Grech’s request. By then, however, Delia’s point had been made.

Meanwhile, on the opposition benches, MP Eve Borg Bonello used her laptop as an impromptu placard, attaching a sheet of paper to her back that appeared prominently her colleagues spoke.

Speaker ‘hasn’t understood a thing,’ Grech says before leading the walkout

In his ruling, Farrugia rejected Grech’s request on account of the ongoing investigation, stating that if a debate happened, one could not guarantee that discussion could be controlled. And this discussion, he said, could prejudice the rights of the people concerned: presumably Muscat and co-defendants.

But Grech was far from impressed by the speaker’s reasoning, insisting that Farrugia “hasn’t understood a thing” about his request.

He stressed that the requested debate was not on the contents of the inquiry, but on the need to publish it and provide the public with the access that Abela enjoyed and was using for his political ends.

The speaker retorted that his rulings could not be discussed, but Grech did not relent, stating that the prime minister’s absence from Parliament to address an urgent press conference proved that the issue was an urgent one that needed to be discussed.

“So we will not remain present at this sitting,” he continued, addressing Farrugia. “Because you, and this government, don’t just want to silence the courts, but even the people’s Parliament.”

The MPs duly walked out, with Farrugia protesting that he completely disagreed with Grech’s statement as they did so.