Rosianne Cutajar’s decision to resign from the Labour Party parliamentary group but stay on as an independent MP is not common. But it is not unprecedented.
The Maltese parliament in the past 50 years or so has seen a number of MPs quitting their party amid controversy. While some left the House immediately, others stayed on as independents or went the whole hog by crossing the floor.
The best known are instances which led governments to fall, such as, in 1954, when John J. Cole left the second Borg Olivier (PN)/Boffa (Malta Workers Party) coalition government.
In the Mintoff-Boffa Labour Party split of 1949, Cole sided with Boffa and joined his MWP. He served as minister but in 1954 resigned from cabinet, voted against the government and the government fell. It was rumoured at the time that he was encouraged to do so by the British governor’s office. His resignation led to a general election in 1955 and Dom Mintoff’s first government.
Mintoff, of course, caused two governments to fall, although he never formally left the Labour Party. He brought down the Boffa government after the Labour split of 1949, opening the door for Nerik Mizzi’s PN minority government of 1950 and subsequent Borg Olivier-Boffa coalition governments. Decades later, he brought down Alfred Sant’s government by voting against a motion for the Vittoriosa seafront to become a yacht marina, which the then prime minister declared to be a vote of confidence. Mintoff never contested a general election after that.
Crossing the floor
Following the general election of 1962, the Nationalist government and the combined opposition each had 25 MPs. But the stalemate was broken when Gozitan Coronato Attard broke with Herbert Ganado’s Democratic Party and crossed the floor, giving Borg Olivier a slim majority in the House.
Mintoff was back in office in 1971 with a majority of one until Nationalist MP Alfred Baldacchino (who had been elected in 1973 in a casual election following the death of veteran Nationalist MP Tommaso Caruana Demajo) crossed the floor a month later and became a Labour backbencher.
Some 15 years later, in 1989, another Mintoff – Wenzu – was expelled from the Labour Party after he was critical of the leadership. He stayed on as an MP, going on to form Alternattiva Demokratika, although he never managed to get re-elected.
In 1995, Labour MP Joe Brincat fell out with his party and sat in parliament as an independent MP until the end of the legislature.
Both Wenzu Mintoff and Joe Brincat were eventually to return to the Labour fold, although they did not return to parliament.
Fast forward more legislatures and Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi saw his one-seat parliamentary majority evaporate when Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando left the party in July 2012 and stayed on as an independent MP. He had earlier shocked the party when he moved a motion for the introduction of divorce. The move was ultimately successful, having been backed by the Labour opposition. The only Labour MP to vote against divorce was Adrian Vassallo, who stayed in the parliamentary group but did not contest the subsequent election.
That election, in 2013, was brought forward slightly when the Gonzi government lost the key budget vote of November 2012 when Nationalist MP Franco Debono voted against it after he had been railing against the government on various issues in the justice sector for several months previously.
Just over two years later, in 2015, veteran and popular Nationalist MP, Giovanna Debono, a minister for some 12 years, resigned from the PN parliamentary group but stayed on as MP after her husband was charged with misappropriation, fraud, abuse of power, falsifying documents and committing a crime which, as a public official, he was in duty bound to prevent. He was eventually acquitted of all charges, but Debono never returned to frontline politics.
The Labour government, meanwhile, had problems of its own as Marlene Farrugia left its ranks in 2016 but stayed in the House, eventually setting up the Democratic Party with her partner Godfrey Farrugia, who was removed as health minister in 2014 but stayed on as Labour MP. Her departure did not cause serious problems to the government since it enjoyed a comfortable majority in the House. Godfrey and Marlene Farrugia were able to stay on as MPs after the 2017 election thanks to their party’s alliance with the PN, but both did not contest the 2022 election.
Prime minister Joseph Muscat famously resigned his post in January 2020 but stayed on for several more months as an MP, albeit still within the Labour group.
But as Prime Minister Robert Abela took over, former minister Konrad Mizzi was expelled from the Labour group. He defied the party by opting to stay in the House as an independent MP but did not seek re-election in 2022.
Another former minister who was shown the door by the Labour group was Chris Cardona, who, however, immediately gave up his seat.
Another former minister, meanwhile, quit her ministerial post twice, but managed to hang on as a Labour MP until the 2022 general election. Justyne Caruana first resigned as Gozo minister after her husband, a police superintendent, was found to have a close friendship with Yorgen Fenech, who is awaiting trial in connection with the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
She was politically rehabilitated and given ministerial responsibility for education by Robert Abela in January 2020, only to be forced to resign shortly after following an investigation into a €5,000-a-month contract the ministry awarded to her close friend, former footballer Daniel Bogdanovic, although he had no experience for the role.
On the opposition benches, meanwhile, relatively new MP David Thake resigned from parliament in the wake of revelations over outstanding VAT dues.
And in 2021, Labour MP Silvio Grixti resigned after he was questioned by the police in connection with an investigation into the issuing of sick leave certificates.