What’s in a presidency?

It took us a while, but we finally found a discipline in which to set a global world record. Malta is now the proud owner of the President with the longest name on the planet. At nine syllables, President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca is name and double-barrelled surname ahead of all competition, leaving her closest rival, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, trailing a full two syllables behind. And it’s a title President Marie Louise can expect to hold onto for a while, too… at least until Iran allows women to enter politics, or Roberta Metsola Tedesco Triccas ever gets nominated.

So rejoice, fellow citizens. We are undisputed world leaders at long last.

And yet, despite such a clear reason for national festivity – for which we even have a committee these days – the general reaction has so far sounded like …“AAARGH–GNNNG–GRRRRRR–GRGRGR!”… coming from all directions at once. Nationalists are howling because MLCP is a Labourite and as we all know, the Nationalist Party has an unlimited season ticket that allows it to appoint all politically sensitive positions, even from the Opposition benches. Labourites are howling because she was one of their most popular ministers ever, so naturally they resent the fact that she has been given the most prestigious role the country has to offer. And it would seem that the one howling the loudest is Marie Louise Coleiro Etc. herself: echoed by all her canvassers and other political minions, who have suddenly lost their chief protégé (and with her, all their own political influence) to an unsubtle upstairs kick.

In a sense you can almost understand her (and their) indignation. She was, after all, well on her way to becoming the first female Pope, in comparison to which honour, ‘Malta’s second female President’ does admittedly sound a little lame. And after that, canonisation was sure to follow, seeing as she also shares one of her many names with Malta’s first (male, and to date only) Catholic saint. So yes, it must be terribly galling to have up give up such a saintly vocation to become Malta’s official opener of exhibitions and conferences, and chief inspector of the Armed Forces at military parades. (Have I left any of the President’s duties out? Ah yes: answering the telephone at charity events such as L-Istrina – named after the utterance with which this annual festivity of mawkishness is usually greeted each year, only without the ‘Haqq’ that normally precedes it – and falling asleep during orchestral recitals at St John’s Co-Cathedral. The latter being a hugely important service to the nation, which I am pleased to say all our Presidents have always performed with impeccable panache.)

Nor is MLCP the first Presidential nomination to be met with thinly disguised fury or dismay. George Abela may not himself have howled and gnashed his teeth very loudly – at least, not in public – but Gonzi’s decision at the time was met with fierce indignation in the Labour camp, where it was interpreted as a stratagem to weaken the Opposition by depriving it of one of its most seasoned veterans. The late Guido de Marco was reportedly less than pleased at his own nomination, which cut short his term as foreign minister (and a pretty busy one at that) and also deputy prime minister.

An exception can arguably be made for Eddie Fenech Adami, who unlike the others was not plucked from an important political position midway through his career. But his nomination was the most criticised of the lot: mainly by people who (not without good reason) viewed him as the most divisive choice imaginable at the time.

But in all this self-flagellation amid cries of ‘Why me?’ and ‘Why now?’ there is a small detail all parties concerned seem to be overlooking. So perhaps a few words about the Presidency itself – what it does and does not signify – may befit the solemnity of the occasion.

My original intention was to enlist a guest contributor to this end. Ideally, someone who truly understands the significance of the role in Malta’s geo-political structures: a Constitutional lawyer, perhaps; or the President’s personal limo-driver. But as these were all busy protesting against the nomination, you’ll have to make do with little old me instead.

So this goes out to all Maltese Presidents, past, present and future, though it may apply to some more than others. Cheer up, will you? I mean, for crying out loud: you were (or will be) made President of the Republic. It’s not as though you’ve been selected for this year’s edition of the Hunger Games, you know. And while the prospect of doubling up as Malta’s formal master of ceremonies may not be everyone’s cup of tea, you could at least pretend to be honoured by the appointment. If not for your own sake, at least for ours.

Yes, I am aware this may come as a shock, but there are other people who inhabit this rock apart from yourselves, your extended networks of political apparatchiks, and your past or present constituents. And some of us need to keep up the national pretence that the Presidency really is a prestigious office to hold instead of the political equivalent of Death Row, which we all know it really is. It is important for our sense of identity, for reasons which are too obvious to even bother mentioning here. But it is important also to believe – ideally on the basis of truth, and not wilful self-deception – that the Republic itself has a value; and that it is worth slightly more than the sum of one person’s (or one party’s) political aspirations.

But it gets progressively harder to force oneself to believe this, when the people who get nominated to represent that Republic react by stamping their feet and raging against the injustice of the universe. That sort of thing merely reinforces the already widespread perception that in actual fact the Presidency – and by extension, the Republic it represents – is worthless. And this in turn underscores the impression that there is nothing higher or more worthwhile to aspire to in this country than a conniving rat race among a bunch of backstabbing politicians. It cements the ancestral view that this country really has been trenchantly sliced up like a fish-shaped Figolla, to be shared exclusively by two gluttonous institutions to the exclusion of everybody else.

But it is not just the Presidential nominees who tend to forget all this. The nominators, too, get a small mention in the call of honour. From their perspective, the Presidency (like the office of European Commissioner, for that matter) is viewed as a useful tool with which to attain entirely private political objectives. It can be used to create instant vacant seats in parliament, to be filled by easily predicted by-elections. It can serve as a filter to weed out (and effectively silence) any inconvenient protagonist, who might otherwise outshine the Prime Minister in popularity ratings or, if chosen from the Opposition, who might prove a formidable opponent.

It also furnishes a remarkably convenient excuse to precipitate another useful exercise in power-maximisation: a Cabinet reshuffle, in which the office of the President becomes a wild card that automatically trumps all other concerns.

You will notice, however, that in all this manoeuvring and political tinkering, little or no consideration is ever given to the broader picture of what the presidency means to everyone else. This may explain why, with the exception of the first-ever President in 1974, all nominees have been either serving or retired politicians. Which makes sense, from the very narrow perspective of a Prime Minister. Moving such players around the chessboard may radically alter the outcome of the political game. But moving non-political pieces on the same board? That serves no political purpose whatsoever to the Prime Minister and if it serves anybody else’s purposes – say, for instance, the citizens of the Republic of Malta, whom the President is supposed to represent and serve – well, it’s a classic case of mind over matter. The Prime Minister doesn’t mind, we don’t matter. 

The other thing about slicing your country up like a Figolla is that… well, you know what they say about fishcakes. You can’t have your Figolla and eat it, too. Muscat evidently thought he could sidestep, or at least minimise, some of the outrage at his decision by allowing President Marie Louise to continue chairing the commissions and boards that made her so popular with voters. But it doesn’t quite work that way. Or at least, it shouldn’t.

Once you’ve selected your preferred Presidential candidate and moved her onto her new place on the chessboard you can’t also keep her on the same space she occupied before. Apart from the purely Newtonian impossibility of occupying two spaces at the same time – unless we really are dealing with sub-atomic particles here – there is also the small matter of the Maltese Constitution. That’s the document that decides what a President can and cannot do in this country. And last I looked, there was nothing in it to suggest that a newly-appointed President can move into San Anton and take half her ministerial portfolio with her as she goes.

When this was pointed out to him, Muscat’s reaction was that the scenario of President enjoying new and unforeseen superpowers is ‘perfectly legal’. What he meant, of course, is that there is no law specifically forbidding it, which is perfectly true and also perfectly useless as a gauge by which to measure the wisdom of a decision.

Saying that something is ‘not illegal’ is not, in itself, an argument. In most cases it just means that the legislature hasn’t yet come round to legislating properly. This can be confirmed by merely glancing at Chapter Five of the Constitution, which prescribes the office of the President, in just three and a half paragraphs (with no description at all of the functions of the role). Considering that the Presidency is supposed to be an autonomous branch of government alongside the Executive, the fact that there is no Constitutional proviso against any collusion between Presidency and Executive is very clearly a MISTAKE which Muscat is casually exploiting for his own purposes.

In so doing he is further reducing the Presidency – already viewed as an inconvenience by all appointees – to an extension of his own, already gargantuan Cabinet of Ministers.

And whose purpose does that serve, I wonder? Hmm, let’s see now…