The President of the Republic is the guardian of the Constitution but there is no real political power invested in the office.
The only time a President's judgment can have a lot of bearing is when the Prime Minister asks him to dissolve Parliament and call an election. The President can technically refuse to do so but even when the scenario came into play in 1998, after Alfred Sant's government lost a vote in Parliament which Dr Sant considered as a vote of no confidence, President Ugo Mifsud Bonnici did the predictable and called the election.
The House Select Committee appointed soon after the 1987 election to recommend changes to the Constitution observed that the Office of the President does not give the holder "the power to act as the watchdog of the Constitution".
Chaired by then Deputy Prime Minister Guido de Marco, the committee members included Ugo Mifsud Bonnici and Ċensu Tabone representing the government and Dom Mintoff and Joe Cassar for the opposition.
Ironically, the three government representatives went on to become Presidents in the years to follow.
The Select Committee had suggested widening the powers of the President by making the holder of office head of a Council of State, which would include the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and a number of State Counsellors.
The Council of State would also decide on certain nominations, such as the Principal Electoral Commissioner and other institutional roles. Under the proposals put forward by the Select Committee, the President would have also been head of the armed forces.
Within this context the President would need to be elected either by a two-thirds majority in Parliament or by popular vote.
Nothing ever came out of these suggestions although much of those proposals found their way into Azzjoni Nazzjonali's electoral manifesto last year.
The next real attempt at reform came in 1993 when the government published the White Paper, The Change Continues.
The White Paper was less adventurous in its suggestions to widen the President's powers but it did propose the setting up of an Electoral College. If Parliament could not agree unanimously on one person, the President would be elected by simple majority from a wider Electoral College comprised of the 65 MPs and 37 mayors (later brought down to 32) elected among themselves. The President would also have greater powers to nominate the constitutional boards and authorities.
The White Paper was eventually presented as a Bill in Parliament at the beginning of summer 1995 but it never reached discussion stage. The Bill required a two-thirds majority and the opposition was not interested in its contents.