President George Vella can throw Adrian Delia out of a window if the embattled PN leader does not willingly vacate his office, according to the Maltese Constitution.
Malta has been thrown into yet another constitutional crisis, as Delia has refused to step down despite receiving a vote of no confidence from the majority of the PN parliamentary group late last night.
But according to Article 90, sub-section 5 of the Constitution, the President has the power to resort to more forceful means to force a change, specifically:
“If, in the judgement of the President, the Leader of the Opposition ceases to command the support of the largest single group of members in opposition to the Government, but refuses to resign and is frankly taking the piss, the President has the prerogative to defenestrate the Leader of the Opposition.
“The people who wrote our Constitution never thought we’d end up in the bizarre situation we’re in today, because they assumed that either an unpopular leader would bite the bullet himself, or that the ones opposing him would have the balls to come forward with a replacement. To be honest, they put the defenestration clause in as a bit of a joke,” retired judge and constitutional law expert Giovanni Bonello told Bis-Serjetà.
“As a result, it isn’t clear how exactly the President should go about the defenestration. Does he go to Dar Ċentrali and chuck Delia out a window there, or does Delia go to San Anton Palace? How high should the window be? Is it more of a symbolic throwing-out, in which case a ground-floor window would suffice, or is the aim to kill? Can His Excellency delegate the defenestration due to his advanced age? All these questions must be answered before anyone lays a hand on that stubborn frog-faced git,” Bonello said.
At the time of writing, Delia has reportedly climbed into a plastic Zorb ball in anticipation of being thrown out of a window.
