Speaker’s reason for abstention
Reference is being made to the article entitled ‘Speaker’s abstention has brought “law of the jungle”‘ (May 3).
By way of right of reply, attention is being drawn to the press release issued by the Office of the Speaker on May 3 on the vote taken last week during the last meeting of the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
In this press release, Anġlu Farrugia is making reference to the motivation of his vote and to his argumentation that, even though he shared some of Commissioner George Hyzler’s views on the case in question, he could not vote in favour of the report in its entirety because the Standards in Public Life Act does not permit voting in favour of parts of the report and not of others. He, therefore, maintains that, in the particular circumstances of the case in question, he felt that his only option was to abstain.