The fuel stabilisation reserve comes before the Chamber on Monday morning at ten. Corridor surcharges remain near eighteen per cent, the Harbour Authority's refiling requirement is in force, and the four front-bench positions printed in these pages on Thursday have not materially shifted over the weekend.

The Government continues to present the reserve as a technical instrument. The Opposition Leader, Renko, returned to the Assembly steps yesterday morning to argue, again, that the queues at the pumps are the file and the rest is paperwork. "People are queuing three hours for fuel they can't afford," he told reporters. "Three hours. While the Port sits" — the rest of the sentence was lost to a passing tram, and the Opposition's office has not provided a transcript.

Don Rafael, writing in the Courier of Record, called Monday "not a procedural matter" but "a reckoning," and asked his benches for discipline. The Proprietor's editorial, reprinted in summary in these pages on Friday, argued for stability over sovereignty in the parallel northern tariff file and for clarity, not deferral, on the reserve.

What the four positions share is the assumption that the vote will be held. None of the front benches has asked for a postponement, despite the Council's report on the two Estrellas arriving the same evening and the Cardenal's external-affairs session on Saturday. A small kingdom, asked to do three things at once, generally does them at once.