Like Gonzi, Farrugia is not the first unelected Speaker of the House

Opposition leader Lawrence Gonzi will tomorrow vote against the appointment of Anglu Farrugia as Speaker, after having insisted that it should be a member of the House - and not a former MP - that should take the role of Speaker.

Since first declaring that an MP should be appointed Speaker two weeks ago, the Nationalist parliamentary group this week said that the Prime Minister's nomination of Farrugia was not carried out in consultation with the Opposition.

In contrast, Lawrence Gonzi himself was not elected to parliament in 1987 when he ran on the second and third districts, but was still appointed Speaker by Eddie Fenech Adami.

Succeeding Jimmy Farrugia as president of the House, Gonzi did not run for office in 1992 when he was reappointed Speaker in the subsequent legislature. He was successfully elected in 1996 when Labour was re-elected in government.

Two weeks ago Gonzi said on Radju Malta that the government should appoint a serving Labour MP in view of the government's nine-seat parliamentary majority: a safe majority that does not leave it dependant on a casting vote as had been the case in the last legislature.

Back in 2008, then Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi had offered the Speaker's post to the Labour Opposition despite his wafer-thin majority. Labour had declined the offer - it would have effectively widened the government's one-seat majority since the Speaker only has a casting vote.

In December 2012, Farrugia was asked to resign from his post as PL deputy leader for parliamentary affairs after a piteous performance on TV with his Nationalist counterpart Simon Busuttil. Joseph Muscat demanded he resign three days later, ostensibly over comments he passed a day earlier when suggesting that a magistrate had been politically biased in her court decisions.

Farrugia had at the time described his removal as a political assassination, and did not contest the general election.