Anġlu Farrugia’s greatest hits

When the prime minister publicly announced that former minister Carmelo Abela would become the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, he thanked outgoing Speaker Anġlu Farrugia for his “long and impeccable service” and his “leadership within Parliament throughout these last three legislatures.”

As with every other political representative making their way out of the limelight, the Labour Party will most certainly do its best to further clean up Farrugia’s legacy and his longstanding reputation as a partisan loyalist willing to bend the rules to favour his Party.

While the Speaker’s power is more or less limited to Parliament’s halls, Farrugia nonetheless wielded significant decision-making clout throughout his 13-year tenure, as exemplified by the Speaker’s casting vote during parliamentary stalemates and the ability to hand down a ruling whenever a dispute between MPs arises, or a breach of protocol is identified.

Since 2013, Farrugia used that power to stifle accountability rather than actively pursue it, often opting for the least disruptive outcome and only deciding against Labour Party ministers and MPs whenever it was apparent that their troubles were too big to sweep under the carpet.

As the Speaker’s torch passes from one veteran of the Labour Party to another, here’s a rundown of some of Farrugia’s most egregious rulings, gaffes, and lapses of judiciousness.

The list is far from exhaustive, but the record says a lot. Just be sure not to ask him to pronounce the word “ubiquitous” ever again…

Help a prime minister out

If there’s one thing that was consistent about Farrugia’s tenure as Speaker, it was his ability to recognise who butters his bread and act accordingly.

Since the Labour Party swept to power in 2013, Farrugia bailed out both Prime Minister Robert Abela and his disgraced predecessor, Joseph Muscat.

In 2021, when the Standards Commissioner found that Joseph Muscat abused his power by awarding disgraced former minister Konrad Mizzi an €80,000-a-year consultancy job just days after Mizzi had resigned, Farrugia ruled that since Muscat was no longer an MP, he could not be summoned for questioning.

Three years later, the Standards Commissioner found that Robert Abela breached the code of ethics by financing and airing a propaganda video through public funds.

Instead of acknowledging that Abela failed to separate his role as prime minister from that of a politician seeking re-election, the Speaker used a legal loophole, stating that since the advertising guidelines issued by the Commissioner and breached by Abela had not yet been implemented into law, he had no alternative but to absolve Abela from any wrongdoing.

Despite Farrugia’s acrimonious fallout with Joseph Muscat in 2013 and Abela’s repeated refusals to be held accountable by Parliament’s standards watchdog, the three-term Speaker bowed his head every time, proving that his greatest loyalty was always to retaining his iced bun.

Clashes with the press, civil society, and the Opposition

Farrugia has faced multiple calls for his resignation.

One of the most memorable public exchanges Farrugia had in this regard was when Matthew Caruana Galizia doubled down on civil society’s calls for Farrugia’s resignation, accusing the Speaker of making “an extraordinary effort to protect an MP who accepted a bribe from a person who is on track to be prosecuted for high-level corruption.”

Caruana Galizia’s accusation was made in the context of the Speaker’s failure to publicly reprimand Labour Minister Rosianne Cutajar, who had been found in breach of parliamentary ethics after failing to disclose her role as a broker in a property deal involving Yorgen Fenech.

The Speaker’s parliamentary antics led to multiple protests and even walk-outs from the Opposition.

Just last year, Farrugia prevented the Opposition from putting forward a no-confidence vote in former Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri (now in charge of the education portfolio) after the scandalous and outright embarrassing cannabis heist from a “secure” AFM compound.

In 2023, just after the Nationalist Party had scored a rare victory through Adrian Delia’s successful efforts to get the hospitals’ concession rescinded, the Opposition walked out of Parliament en masse after Farrugia allowed the government additional speaking time on the motion, giving government MPs extra time to neuter the motion with amendments.

Within this news portal’s first year, Farrugia had even accepted Labour MP Glenn Bedingfield’s claim that an article published in The Shift’s Disinformation Watch series, which exposed how the government was manipulating information related to the Panama Papers revelations, was jeopardising the rights of the accused.

Always with an olive branch at hand

Though there really are too many instances to list them all without making the article too bulky for consumption, some examples are just too important not to mention.

Farrugia protected Economy Minister Silvio Schembri from consequences after Schembri misled Parliament about the quantity and value of direct orders issued through the Malta Gaming Authority.

Later, he even went so far as to claim that the Speaker’s role does not involve entering into the merits of whether an MP or a Minister was lying, despite the role’s established function as both a moderator and an enforcer of parliamentary discipline.

Farrugia abstained from casting his deciding vote after the Standards Commissioner reported that then-minister Carmelo Abela was in breach of ethical standards after the latter spent €7,000 in taxpayers’ money on promotional adverts.

Indeed, the only instances when Farrugia made the correct ruling occurred when public pressure was spiralling so hard out of control that he was left with hardly any option, as was the case when former tourism minister Clayton Bartolo was forced out after he was caught handing lucrative public contracts to his wife.