House rules. Or does it?

Monday's ruling by Speaker of the House Michael Frendo speaks volumes about the precarious state of Maltese parliamentary democracy in 2012.

Ultimately, what Frendo's decision illustrates is that the House's agenda is dictated exclusively by the party in government, in what amounts to a "winner takes all" mentality.

Frendo himself alluded to this, with his remarkable admission that: "at present all the keys are in the Government's hands."

So at the end of much unnecessarily lengthy deliberation, he came to the conclusion that his own hands had all along been tied by amendments to the House's Standing Orders... and that he therefore had no real choice in the matter at all.

Frendo's decision de facto implies that any motion presented by the Opposition - i.e., not just the recent motion to discuss the car park privatisation initiative, but literally any motion at all... even a private member's bill - can only be put on the Order Paper by agreement of the House Business Committee (controlled by government); or by the Leader of the House, who happens to also be the deputy prime minister..

Justifying his decision to reject the Opposition's request for the House to debate its motion on government' plans to privatise the management of 32 car parks, Michael Frendo said that the Chair had been compelled to follow the existing rules... though it appreciated that these same rules needed to be updated.

Frendo also made a number of interesting revelations. For instance: since 1976, in transpires that more than 40 private motions had been presented, but not moved in the House.

Moreover, Standing Orders had actually reserved alternate Thursdays for private business; but owing to a procedural motion this was no longer possible in practice.

Sifting through the complexities of parliamentary procedure, what one is left with is a scenario whereby Opposition remains free to table as many motions as it likes; but when (or even whether) these motions are actually discussed is a matter decided exclusively by the government.

And from the statistics provided by Frendo, it seems that government frequently decides against hearing such motions in the first place.

On this occasion, the Speaker arguably added insult to injury by declaring his own personal support for an update of Standing Orders in order to address such a glaring democratic deficit - as the situation strips the Opposition of any real influence on proceedings, despite the fact that it represents almost half the electorate.

However, any such reform of the system is unlikely to bear any fruit before the next election. This is not a satisfactory state of affairs by any stretch of the imagination, as the current Standing Orders can be used to prop up governments when facing a political crisis.

Interestingly Frendo found himself quoting a ruling by former Speaker Myriam Spiteri Debono in 1997 - at the height of the Sant-Mintoff conflagration that ultimately brought down the short-lived Labour government of the day - which had barred the (then Nationalist) opposition from presenting an adjournment motion.

On that occasion, Debono likewise ruled against presenting the motion during the time of uncontested business (a ruling which happened to favour the Labour government at the time).

This time round, Frendo added that he would be convening another meeting of the House Business Committee next Thursday, in the hope that some sort of agreement could be reached between the Government and the Opposition on this debate.

But the Speaker's ruling effectively means that the government will have the final say: which in practice means that both the opposition motion and (for instance) Franco Debono's motion of no confidence can be postponed indefinitely or only discussed at a date convenient to government.

The irony is inescapable, and one can only marvel at the glaring double standards involved in the two rulings of 1997 and 2012 respectively. As things stand, the Nationalist administration has found itself resorting to the same mechanism which had been used against it in 1997: this time to block discussion of a politically sensitive issue, exactly in the same way as the Labour administration had previously done to the PN's own adjournment motion.

Perhaps conscious of the inherent hypocrisy, Opposition leader Joseph Muscat clearly resisted the impulse to complain at a Machiavellian strategy used by his own party 16 years earlier. But while this may illustrate a basic cognisance of the double standards on Labour's part, it doesn't make the situation any less reprehensible.

Stranding Orders do not exist merely for the government of the day to kill any discussion that runs counter to its own, purely political interests. On the contrary, they serve to structure and order the flow of public discussion... and this is the very opposite of the function they seem to be serving now, which is to stifle discussion altogether.

But such is the sorry state of Parliament today that it can no longer even discuss motions brought forward in the House, for fearing of actually having to take a vote.

With hindsight, 2012 may yet go down in history as the year when Malta's highest institution reached its lowest ebb of credibility.