Article 59(2)-(3) of the Constitution deals, inter alia, with the election of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives. The article lays down that: “the Speaker may be elected either(a) from among persons who are members of the House but are not ministers or parliamentary secretaries, or (b) from among persons who are not members of the House and are qualified for election as members thereof.”
Is it not high time that article 59 of the Constitution is modified so that both the Speaker and Deputy Speaker are both appointed from outside rather than from inside the House?
The article goes on to state:“The House shall elect a member of the House, who is not a minister or a parliamentary secretary, to be Deputy Speaker of the House...”
The House approved the Government’s motion for the appointment of lawyer Anġlu Farrugia as Speaker from outside it.
The Government also allowed the Opposition to choose the Deputy Speaker from its group and architect Ċensu Galea was so appointed.
The Government was correct in drawing on Farrugia to become Speaker in view of democratic representation so long as the Constitution permits in the case of such presiding officer of the highest democratic institution in the country.
Every elected member in the House is, in principle, constitutionally (legally) and democratically (politically) a representative of the electorate in general and of each and every voter (whether s/he is actually or potentially so or opts to cast a vote). Every elected member must always function as a representative in the course of the House’s sittings, deliberations and decisions from its opening to its dissolution.
Unfortunately, as article 59 stands, the Opposition so far cannot elect a Deputy Speaker from outside the House. The Deputy Speaker has, therefore, been sacrificed from one of the Opposition’s 30 members while the Government laudably gave it latitude to appoint the Deputy Speaker from within its fold.
Already on the eve of the inauguration of responsible government in 1921, the four political parties of the time (Unione Politica Maltese, the Constitutional Party, the Labour Party and the Partito Democratico Nazionalista) elected to the Legislative Assembly had expressed reluctance to surrender one of their members in the “Lower House” for the offices of Speaker and Deputy Speaker because they would have been deprived of one precious vote in the House.
Article 16(1) of the Constitution Letters Patent of 1921 referred to the election of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker from within the House.
The then Governor, Lord Plumer, was prompt to submit a plea to the then Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill, to amend the relevant Malta Constitution Letters Patent to rectify the situation.
Lord Plumer had seen good reason to suggest, although his recommendation could have entailed further administrative expenditure, that the Speaker and Deputy Speaker need not be a member of the House. He was at least for a choice between selecting the presiding incumbents of the House from inside or outside the House.
London agreed the proposal was “unusual and unprecedented” but the matter regrettably remained on the shelf, despite it would have been a democratic quantum leap in terms of representation.
Article 55(2) of the Constitution of 1961 made a breakthrough because it expressly made reference to the election of the Speaker from any elected member from the House or from any person outside it. However, it did not take a further step in respect of the Deputy Speaker in article 56.
The first Speaker who was not a member of the House was Paul Pace, a well-known general merchant.
Article 59 of the present Constitution (of Independence 1964 and the Republic 1974) was to be, and is, a replica of the 1961 position except nominal changes, namely that the Speaker, but not his Deputy, may be appointed from outside the House.
The discretionary appointment of the Speaker, and, more so, the mandatory selection of the Deputy Speaker, from inside the House, are incompatible with any principle of democratic representation, whatever the majorities in the House.
Even when the Speaker and Deputy Speaker are both chosen from inside the House and parity of arms is ensured between the numbers of elected members on the different sides of the House, democratic representation is affected.
Against this background, is it not an explicit democratic disequilibrium in the matter of representation that the Speaker may be elected from outside while the Deputy Speaker must be elected from within?
Is it not a manifest disregard of democratic representation the fact that both the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker may be elected from inside the House as happened on a number of occasions in the politico-constitutional history of Malta?
Is it not high time that article 59 of the Constitution is modified so that both the Speaker and Deputy Speaker are both appointed from outside rather than from inside the House?
The role of the Speaker and his deputy (impartial arbiters) and the role of any member of the House (a representative of the people) are to be kept apart.
Indeed, each member of the House has an inestimable representative and democratic value.
Not one elected member shall be sacrificed for the Chair within our parliamentary democracy.
Raymond Mangion is dean of the Department of Legal History and Legal Methodology within the Faculty of Laws, University of Malta.