Vote against party line not so anathema to PN now, says Franco Debono

Lawyer and one-time rebel Nationalist Party MP Franco Debono could not allow historical justice to pass by without pointing out the irony of his former party's stand today in asking government MPs to support its hospitals deal motion.

Debono said the Opposition's repeated calls asking Labour MPs to vote against the government on the Vitals deal, effectively justified his own vote which had brought down the PN government in 2012.

“This should open a debate on the role of MPs, whether they are their party’s patsy or whether they should act in the national interest,” Debono told the MaltaToday.

Asked if he found it ironic that his former party was asking government MPs to do the same thing he had done, Debono said that he found the news encouraging, as it showed “that when I did this, I did nothing wrong.”

READ ALSO: PN makes last ditch appeal to all MPs: 'Do your duty and vote against the Vitals deal'

Debono has often been linked to a return to politics after he left the party under a cloud, in the aftermath of his vote on a money-bill which brought down Lawrence Gonzi’s government, but has consistently ruled it out. 

“Today the PN has called on government MPs to vote in favour of an Opposition motion, something that happens continuously in every democratic parliament around the world,” Debono said in a statement he published on Facebook.

The former MP rued the fact that the party had “perhaps reacted in a somewhat mistaken manner in the past and this left negative consequences on the same party.”

At that time, apart from taking critical positions, Debono had also pushed on the national agenda a proposal for holistic constitutional reform.

His website, aptly called The Birth of Justice Reform, remains a repository for his ideas for constitutional reform, a topic which he says “still dominates the political agenda to this blessed day.”

Hindsight and a wider and more objective perspective showed that Thursday’s vote was far more serious than anything which happened in his time as an MP and therefore the weight of the vote was greater, Debono said, describing it as a golden opportunity to place the national interest before partisan ones.

Tomorrow, MPs will vote on a motion put forward by the Opposition calling for the hospitals privatisation deal to be cancelled and have the Gozo General Hospital, St Luke's Hospital and Karin Grech Rehabilitation Hospital returned back to the public.

The PN has twice, in the space of two days, called on government MPs to support the motion.

Debono pointed to a speech he had given in Parliament in 2011 about the role of parliament in scrutinising the government. The checks and balances of the legislative on the executive arms of government themselves act as scrutiny as the executive must give an account of its actions to parliament, Debono had said.

The criminal lawyer said he hoped the national interest would trump partisan interests tomorrow, in light of the seriousness of the matter at hand.

READ ALSO: Franco Debono votes against budget