Parliament’s opening speech earlier this month was not the first of its kind to include political jibes, but certainly comes across as the most discordant, according to an analysis by The Sunday Times.
I read the speeches of 1987, 1998 and 2008. No one can say that they did not include political slogans
While previous speeches also made use of electoral slogans and took swipes at the Opposition, they included fewer blatant political barbs than the speech read at the start of this legislature.
Lifted from the British tradition, the Speech from the Throne is read by the President but written by the newly-elected Government to spell out its programme for the legislature.
This legislature’s speech has made headlines for being bookended with inferences to the “arrogant” leadership of the past and the need to “clean up politics”, closing with the Labour Party’s Malta Taghna Lkoll (Malta belongs to us all) slogan.
It also included other phrases commonly used by the PL during its electoral campaign, such as calls for citizens to be “protagonists rather than spectators”.
While Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has been criticised for being responsible for the speech, President George Abela also faced questions for agreeing to read it without objection.
An exercise carried out by The Sunday Times shows that even the parliamentary opening speech of 1987 was tamer than the 22 pages Mr Abela read out on April 6.
Coming off the back of a turbulent legislature, the 1987 parliamentary opening speech written for then-Acting President Paul Xuereb included rather subtle observations, especially given the tense context of the time.
It welcomed the new Nationalist government’s politics as being “truly democratic and Christian”, while saying that citizens wanted “a government that doesn’t distort their identity” and the law to “once again be equal for everyone”.
The situation was similar nine years later, in 1998, when the Nationalist Party had just assumed office following a much shorter period of Labour government. Then President Ugo Mifsud Bonnici read a speech which may have irked Labour party MPs still sore from having been deposed after 18 months in office.
The people, Dr Mifsud Bonnici read, wanted a government “as free as possible from all traces of arrogance,” and which did not give the economy “needless shocks or taxation changes which badly affect government income”.
A speech which stood out for its neutrality, also read out by Dr Mifsud Bonnici, was the one written by newly-elected Prime Minister Alfred Sant in 1996, which focused on the future rather than the previous administration.
The speech only admonished the previous government for its poor financing of projects which led to “wasting money and squandering resources”.
Interestingly, however, it included many references to “my government”, a term which jarred when uttered by PN stalwart Dr Mifsud Bonnici. By comparison, the 1987 speech was careful to replace it with “this government”, making it easier for the Labour-appointed Mr Xuereb.
After it was re-elected by a whisker, the 2008 administration headed by Lawrence Gonzi wrote a speech for then-President Eddie Fenech Adami which was largely devoid of partisan statements, except for a short play on the PN’s slogan: “Together, everything is possible.”
“Together we can overcome the challenges we are facing. Together, our most ambitious goals can become a reality,” it read.
Likewise, the speech read out by President Guido de Marco after PN’s re-election in 2003 did not make any snide remarks about Labour, focusing instead on the importance of EU membership and the changes it would bring.
“Malta’s accession to the EU will affect all aspects of life in Malta. In no area will it involve a denial of our cherished values and customs. But it will mean that we must change all that we have allowed to deteriorate, stagnate or to go wrong through lethargy, carelessness or lack of thought... This is indeed the dawn of a new spring.”
Dr Abela recently reacted to the controversy by saying that the President should no longer be forced to read “purely political” speeches.
Instead, the Government should read its own programme and the President could write his own speech reflecting upon the opening of Parliament – a proposal welcomed by Dr Muscat as sensible.
It then emerged that the speech was handed to Dr Abela two days before he read it and Dr Fenech Adami pointed out he had made changes to the speech given to him in 2008.
But Dr Abela gave an interview to the national broadcaster where he noted that no President had ever meddled with the substance of a parliamentary opening speech.
“I read the speeches of 1987, 1998 and 2008. No one can say that they did not include political slogans. No one can say the speech was not political,” he said, now defending the speech.