Robert Abela and Bernard Grech on Monday traded blows over the appointment of a new Standards Commissioner.
The Prime Minister accused Grech of reneging on an agreement to back the nomination of ex-chief justice Joe Azzopardi.
“You are a liar,” the Opposition leader fired back, saying no such agreement ever existed.
The role of standards czar has been vacant since September after George Hyzler was nominated to serve on the EU’s court of auditors.
Abela has claimed that Grech agreed to Azzopardi being nominated for the role, only to then change his mind.
He said the Opposition’s claims about Azzopardi’s lack of efficiency in the law courts as “baseless”.
The prime minister said Azzopardi’s track record as chief justice was better than those of his predecessors, who Abela described as having been part of the “establishment” favoured by the Opposition.
He also accused Opposition members of piling pressure on members of the judiciary to decide cases in their favour.
“This flies in the face of the rule of law. You not only try to condition people, but you also threaten them,” Abela said, without going into details.
Abela questioned why the Opposition backed Azzopardi’s nomination as Ombudsman if they were so worried about his efficiency.
The prime minister said that the Ombudsman deals with far more cases than the standards commissioner.
Abela said the government was left with no choice but to introduce an anti-deadlock mechanism after it became clear that Grech had reneged on his agreement to back the standards commissioner nomination.
Stand up and be counted: Abela to Grech
Thanks to the mechanism, Azzopardi will be appointed by a simple parliamentary majority should two subsequent votes fail to garner a majority backing his appointment.
The prime minister urged Grech to “stand up and be counted” by getting his parliamentary group to back Azzopardi.
In response, Grech slammed the prime minister’s “divisive” speech.
“I cannot ignore his lies. You cannot look me in the eyes when I call you a liar. We had no such agreement. If we had an agreement then he [Azzopardi] would be standards commissioner today”.
Grech also questioned why the government had continued to drag its feet on the appointment of ex-judge Joe Zammit Mckeon as Ombudsman, seeing that the nomination has the backing of both Labour and PN.
The Opposition leader said people deserve to have someone appointed to the standards role who has the backing of both parties.
Grech said he is still available for further discussions on the matter.
“It all depends on you,” Grech said.
PN MP Karol Aquilina further claimed in a speech that the government had purposely delayed raising the retirement age of the judiciary, waiting until Azzopardi had retired as chief justice.
Aquilina said the government had urged the Opposition benches not to push raising the retirement age until Azzopardi had stood down.
“You knew you had a problem [with him],” Aquilina said.