No more committees please Mr President!

President George Abela finally spared a few moments out of his busy schedule organising fun runs, philanthropic activities and presenting music awards, and remembered what his role of President ought to be. He finally spelled out the word 'Constitution' and during his speech on Republic Day, he even went as far as proposing the setting up of a State Council to actually serve as a watchdog of the Constitution.

As in all major national policies the political elite rushed into forming a political consensus to the President's proposal, which sees the established political parties playing a significant role in this committee.

This Council of State should see the President, Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and former Presidents, whose role will be limited to a consultative body.

As all of these gentlemen were and still are products of the established parties, I could never see how this kind of proposal, which eventually will continue to establish the political parties into some kind of national institutions, would ever be neglected. However, the President should know that constitutions are not designed to safeguard the political elite but specifically to protect the people and this kind of proposed State Council will exactly work against the interest of the nation to the benefit of a tyrannical political class.

Beside the fact that this idea is totally the opposite of what the country actually needs.

The function of this proposed committee will be another discussion group and I'm pretty sure that we already have a number of these. We have committees over committees, an over magnified Parliament of over 60 deputies, consultation boards, councils, experts and more people whose only talent is their ability to discuss non-sense.

What this country really needs are individuals who are ready to stand up and take much needed decisions to their full responsibilities. The ideas of committees are simply hypocritical intention and an act of cowardice to shift responsibilities from the individuals who should take decisions and transfer it to a number of committee members, who end up being protected from any accountability and responsibility that they should bear.

Indeed there exists a much needed debate to radically reform our Constitution, which was designed by the political parties to simply protect their interests. And such reforms should precisely impose the responsibility of the decision making upon the assigned individual and not committees and an excessive Parliament made up of intellectuals capable only to play around public opinion to get elected.

What the country urgently needs is to fight bureaucracy within the government functionality and on the other hand work to cut down the political parties' ever-growing influence and arrogance on the people.

We need to put in place an accountable and responsible political system that would scare away wannabe politicians whose only aim in getting into politics is simply driven by the need to launch their career and get some cheap fame. Some American TV comedian once claimed that "politics is showbiz for ugly people". The Maltese political scene has become just that.