The Times of Malta revealed the shocking news that the newly elected leader of the Nationalist Party, Bernard Grech, is considering imposing on those MPs “who have served through several legislatures, to consider stepping aside to make space for newcomers as part of the party’s renewal process” .

If this were to be so, then Grech would not only be interfering in the sacred democratic rights of each and every one of us to choose freely and without limitations who is to represent us in the House of Representatives but it would also be unconstitutional.

Not many of us voters realise how withered down our right  of choosing freely and directly our parliamentary representatives already is. One needs only to consider how leaders of our major parties were imposed unceremoniously on us in an outright unacceptable extra-parliamentary fashion in that they were chosen from outside parliament and without having won one single vote at a general election.

None of the last two leaders of the Nationalist Party, namely Adrian Delia and Grech, were elected to the House before becoming party leaders. 

In all these situations, the Nationalist Party resorted to the very constitutionally dubious expedient used by both of our major parties of forcing one sitting MP to resign his/her seat to create a vacancy in the House and then ensure that no other candidate contests the ensuing casual election, thereby giving the party the right to co-opt the leader straight to parliament.

As already stated, nor does the Labour Party come out smelling of roses! Notorious remains the very first time this dodgy stratagem was used in the case of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici who was catapulted by the Labour Party into the cabinet and soon after into Castille without having ever contested a general election. At the time, this was considered so dubious a practice that he was dubbed as ‘Iż-Żero’ for obvious electoral reasons.

In more recent times, Labour’s leadership contest to replace Alfred Sant pitted against each other two ‘extra-parliamentarians’, namely George Abela and Joseph Muscat with, of course, Muscat winning and being grafted into the House as the leader of the opposition.

Please Bernard Grech, do not shoot the proverbial messenger, namely your very own electorate

To compound matters further, Muscat was a sitting MEP at the time he chose to cut short the mandate given to him by the electorate to serve in the European Parliament and instead decided to enter the Maltese parliament by the back door, unelected. The Nationalist Party’s Simon Busuttil also had decided to cut short his MEP electoral mandate to contest the 2013 election, allowing him to succeed Lawrence Gonzi as leader of the opposition.

So, dear voter, do not fret too much when you vote at a general election on who will become prime minister as a result of your vote since, in all probability, it will be anyone but the candidates contesting the election!

Now, it would seem that you need no longer fret unduly on whom to choose as your MP since the political party will limit your MP’s stay in the House of Representatives however popular they may be with their constituents.

All this neatly defeats what the constitution prescribes so clearly, namely that the electorate, who should be the ultimate political sovereign, should elect a parliament which should enjoy its confidence. The prime minister and the leader of the opposition should be chosen from among the MPs contesting the election and elected to the House.

So if the electorate deems so fit to elect an MP for 50 years or more, who should be so undemocratic as to interfere with the voters’ decision by limiting the electorate’s prerogative to only a limited number of terms?

If Grech’s supposed stratagem were to realise itself, then Malta would never have had its Lord Strickland, Nerik Mizzi, George Borg Olivier, Paul Boffa, Dom Mintoff, Eddie Fenech Adami and a plethora of other national figures who have honoured our parliament for decades and decades.

Let us be clear: I, for one, fully subscribe to Grech’s brave intention to radically and profoundly renovate the Nationalist Party, its policies and political strategies in the attempt to turnaround its dismal electoral performances of the past two general elections and which, coupled by internal strife, have led many to  query its very viability as a competitive electoral force. Malta desperately needs a strong and credible opposition now more than ever.

Yet, in your task of heeding to the electorate’s message, please, Grech, do not shoot instead the proverbial messenger, namely your very own electorate.

Austin Bencini, Constitutional lawyer