Three years after ministers decided to give themselves an extra salary for their parliamentary duties, the government has decided not to grant the same right to the Opposition Leader.
When the Cabinet decision was made public last year, Labour leader Joseph Muscat had been strongly against this "double salary" and promised to donate the entire €133,855 he would have received over five years to charity.
The Times reported yesterday Dr Muscat never got the supplementary pay he was meant to receive along with ministers and parliamentary secretaries, and the government had refused to explain why.
After the item appeared, the government returned with an unexpected response. A Finance Ministry spokesman said that, since the political parties could not agree on the creation of a commission to regulate politicians' salaries, " there will be no further changes and the case is now closed".
Asked if this meant Dr Muscat will remain the only MP not to receive an honorarium, the government said: "The package is closed for everyone."
Interestingly, it was the government that put a lid on the discussions, which were meant to take place during the House Business Committee meetings following public outrage over the secretive raises the public only got to know about late last year.
Just after the last election, Cabinet members decided they should not lose their honorarium because they were carrying out two distinct jobs. They also decided that the MP salary should be increased to €26,771 from €19,112. Effectively, this gave them a raise of more than €500 per week.
The news only came to light last December in response to a parliamentary question, surprising MPs who had not yet begun receiving their salary at the increased rate. That was also when Finance Minister Tonio Fenech had said that the MPs' honorarium would also be granted to the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader.
This infuriated the Labour Party and a couple of Nationalist MPs who complained about the insensitivity of the raises and the apparent secrecy with which everything was done.
To make matters worse, it was later revealed that while ministers and parliamentary secretaries had started receiving their already increased honoraria, other MPs were still receiving theirs at the old rate.
Eventually, the government gave in to pressure and agreed to postpone any raises to MPs' salaries, declaring that ministers and parliamentary secretaries would begin to refund the difference they received between the old and new rates.
The matter was then taken to the House Business Committee, where the PL proposed that the salaries should revert to the way they were before the election and only increased in the next legislature after being decided publicly through an agreed mechanism by an external commission.
But while Labour wanted to widen the discussion to the salaries of all politicians, the Nationalist Party wanted to restrict it to the salary of MPs, insisting that ministers and parliamentary secretaries should retain two salaries.
Soon after the first meeting, where both parties were asked to think about each other's proposals, the PN rejected the Labour's proposals.
During a House Business Committee meeting yesterday, the leader of the House, Tonio Borg, stressed there would be " no changes" to the package of MPs and everything will revert to the way it was before 2008.
This means that even proposals agreed upon by both parties will now not be implemented. One such proposal was for MPs to be given a €1,500 travel allowance instead of four free Air Malta flight tickets to reduce the burden on the troubled airline. MPs will therefore retain their free Air Malta flights rather than receiving a travel allowance.