Gavin Gulia will have to be vetted by a parliamentary committee before he can be reinstated as chairman of the Malta Tourism Authority.

Gulia, who was elected as an MP to replace Edward Scicluna only to resign a few minutes later last Wednesday, has said that the prime minister wants him to stay on as MTA chairman, a role he has fulfilled since 2013. 

Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo confirmed on Friday that Gulia would have to face parliamentary scrutiny before being reinstated.   

“A few moments after Gulia’s resignation from parliament, I submitted his nomination as the Malta Tourism Authority’s chairman for vetting via the public appointments committee’s (PAC) chairman,” Bartolo said. 

Bartolo, who is one of seven members on the PAC, said that he would be recusing himself from scrutinising Gulia, given that he had nominated him to the MTA role himself. 

“I believe this is the best way forward so we can observe the public administration act’s guidelines,” he said.

Gulia beat Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Charles Azzopardi to win the seat vacated by Edward Scicluna, who resigned from parliament to become Central Bank governor. 

By resigning from parliament, he allowed the government to co-opt another person who did not run for office during the 2017 election into parliament.

Prime Minister Robert Abela confirmed on Friday that the plan was to nominate disability commissioner Oliver Scicluna into parliament. 

The PN opposition has criticised Gulia's sudden resignation as a display of “utter contempt for the will of the electorate.”

Pullicino Orlando, who lost the casual election to Gulia by 466 votes, said on Thursday that he believed Gulia's resignation "was not pre-arranged."

Abela has said there is nothing undemocratic about the manoeuvre and noted that current PN leader Bernard Grech and his predecessor Adrian Delia were both co-opted into parliament. 

The committee that will scrutinise Gulia's reappointment to the MTA is chaired by Anthony Agius Decelis, one of four members of the previous cabinet who were left out in Abela’s reshuffle in January of last year.

The rest of the committee, besides Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo, is made up of government whip Glenn Bedingfield and Labour MP Joe Mizzi.

Clyde Puli, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici and Karol Aquilina stand in as representatives of the opposition on the committee.