The public verdict on the thirteen hour debate on the confidence motion in government was already out before the debate actually started. To many this had been a complete waste of time. To many more this was once again a descent into partisan pique, mudslinging and tomfoolery – a sentiment that would turn out to […]
“Quand j’entends, par exemple, madame Taubira dire qu’elle n’est pas au courant (du fond du dossier), elle nous prend pour des blaireaux. – Gilbert Collard. One hot issue in French politics right now is that of Sarkozy’s tapped phone. It turns out that Sarkozy was being tapped while conversing with his lawyers and a huge […]
Random thoughts on parliamentary democracy. 1. October 9th. Luxembourg’s parliament reopens after the summer recess as does Belgium’s senate. L’essentiel reports that 30% of the members have sat in parliament for over 15 years. A commentary on Belgian radio remarked that it will be a slow period of work for the Belgian lawmakers marked by […]
For a while I too had got caught in the whole spin business about “our lazy parliamentarians who have delayed the end of summer recess unashamedly”. Having rightly sussed the nationalist ploy to survive to the start of the recess and then hopefully plot the end of Franco over the summer, I wrongly assumed that […]
Discussing the Franco Debono situation over lunch yesterday, we joked that his statement of “I will not vote with Labour” (as reported by MaltaToday) meant just that. Admittedly our considerations were more in jest than anything else but we considered the possibility that Franco was using his very literal form of reasoning in the sense […]
It was already clear from the fact that no money votes are being taken in parliament. If we needed any confirmation then this came with the long Easter break that our elected underpaid representatives have taken. The length of this year’s parliamentary Easter recess is four weeks. In the meantime and run up to this […]
