The government has moved ahead with its plans to allow it to appoint a standards Commissioner with a simple majority in parliament if the Opposition opposes its nominee. 

Prime Minister Robert Abela tabled a motion for the first reading of an amendment to the Act for Standards in Public Life during a parliamentary session on Wednesday. 

The amendment would introduce an anti-deadlock mechanism into the law, allowing the standards commissioner to be elected with a simple majority should two consecutive votes taken within seven days of each other fail to yield the two-thirds majority required by law. 

Abela has argued that the mechanism is necessary to prevent the Opposition from blocking the appointment of a key parliamentary official for partisan reasons. 

He has also noted that both the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission – a body of rule of law experts that advised Malta on governance reforms – as well as former PN leader Simon Busuttil had proposed introducing anti-deadlock mechanisms into law. 

Tensions over the appointment have dominated PL-PN relations in the past week, with the Opposition saying it will vote against the nomination of former chief justice Joseph Azzopardi to the post. 

The PN has not publicly explained its reasons for opposing Azzopardi, though party sources told Times of Malta that it believes he is a slow worker and will cause case backlogs. 

Abela has claimed that his counterpart Bernard Grech verbally agreed to nominate Azzopardi to the role, only to renege on that verbal agreement hours later. 

In a statement on Wednesday, the government said that “common sense” should mean that the anti-deadlock mechanism will not be required on this occasion, given Grech’s initial agreement with Azzopardi’s nomination. 

Having been presented to parliament, the legal amendment will now be placed on parliament’s agenda and subjected to a second reading, when MPs can debate it and propose amendments before a vote is taken and it is passed into law.