Updated | PD rail against pension reform Bill proposed under Godfrey Farrugia as Whip

Former Government whip Godfrey Farrugia was in favour of a bill that would allow MPs to earn an early pension, former Labour MP Lino DeBono has claimed.

DeBono, who is also the secretary for former members of parliament, confirmed that Farrugia was Government whip when the bill was tabled in Parliament and claimed that he was in favour of it.

“I am astonished on how he has come out against the bill as I remember him being fully in favour of it,” DeBono told this newspaper.

But the Democratic Party (PD) MP said that the bill was never discussed in parliament when he was whip.

“I did my job as whip according to the instructions from the leader of the House in order to facilitate the procedure,” he explained. “As a back-bencher in the previous legislation, I often spoke against various amendments.”

Read more: PD claim they were purposely excluded from MPs' pension vote

Farrugia said that he was sharing his views now that the bill has reached discussion stage, “As long as there is one citizen forced to thrive on a pension which is less than a reasonable living pension, reform for MPs should not take place.”

“This Government boasts of a surplus, while there are those among us who have to subsist on a pension of €500 a month or less,” he said.

The comments come in response to a video blog posted by PD MP Marlene Farrugia in which she claimed that Parliament took the opportunity to vote for early pensions for MPs as soon as PD members were not present in the House.

“This is a tactic often used within parliament,” she said, “in which the Government whip and Nationalist whip reach an agreement.”

Asked to respond to this accusation, Government whip Byron Camilleri stated that this was “another of Marlene Farrugia’s media stunts” and that the vote that was held in parliament was not held with any intentions in mind as claimed by Farrugia.

“There was no prior agreement between me and the Opposition whip, the time and day on which the vote would be held was set-up in a house business committee at an earlier date.

Everyone knew when the vote would be taken,” he told this newspaper.

According to Camilleri, the vote would still have passed if the PD MPs were present.

Nationalist whip Robert Cutajar echoed a similar sentiment, saying that the accusation was a ‘figment of [Farrugia’s] imagination’. Denying that the vote was intentionally taken when the PD MPs were not present, Cutajar said that it is the responsibility of the MPs to be in the chamber during discussion and voting time.

The pensions reform would directly benefit former speakers Miriam Spiteri Debono, Albert Fenech, and speaker Anglu Farrugia.

Petition

The PD announced that it will be launching a petition on the House of Representatives online system, in order to provide people with an opportunity to express their disapproval of the new law.

“The petition will need to be discussed by the Petitions Committee in Parliament, who will then decide whether a second debate on the subject will be held in the Parliament. This will really show who are the politicians that listen to the people and who are not,” Godfrey Farrugia said.

“PL and PN have turned on the hard-working people of Malta and Gozo. They are partners in this.” Marlene Farrugia said.

‘Labour spin’

In a statement issued on Monday Farrugia said that Labour Party “spin” would not change the fact that it was trying to raise parliamentarians’ pensions, while others in society struggled to make ends meet.

The PD MP insisted that no reform of MPs pensions should take place before everyone in society was granted a living pension.

“I’d like to remind everyone of the outrage the Labour Party voiced when the PN gave €500 a week increase to members of the cabinet while the nation was struggling to make ends meet,” said Farrugia.

"This is not the Labour which the people elected in 2013 and which it hopefully re-elected in 2017. The more time passes the more it becomes clear that this is a government that thinks of itself and its inner circle. Naturally, Delia's PN agreed with giving itself a raise, since there's nothing to distinguish the two of them," he added. 

Additional reporting by Karl Azzopardi