The nominee to the presidency, in an interview, correctly stated that President George Abela is still in office and it will not be for another month until Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca will be appointed, one hopes, with the consent of the entire House of Representatives.

This gives valuable time in which the overdose of adrenaline which must have hit our future president, as also the entire nation, to come back to normal levels and, above all, for a vital rational and constitutional process to set in.

This principally involves the Prime Minister’s trump card of offering to give up important slices of social policy making to the presidency. One immediately understands the thinking behind this unprecedented offer.

Coleiro Preca comes in the mould of Abela in that they both had not spent any appreciable time in the Cabinet and, in the case of Abela, he was catapulted to Malta’s highest office from outside Parliament.

All of the other seven presidents before him had already spent not only a long political career as MPs but also a good number of years in the Cabinet. To these, therefore, the presidency represented a new experience in statesmanship after many years of facing the Opposition to fend off partisan accusations of all sorts.

The more successful their predecessors were as ministers, the more they felt that the presidency was to be as ‘ceremonial’ as possible so that they could unite the entire nation behind them, despite their partisan antecedents.

The most notable was that of Eddie Fenech Adami, who literally walked into the presidency from the prime minister’s office, which he occupied successfully for many, many years. In fact, one should note that, in all of the seven cases, each was successful in ultimately winning over the nation.

The challenge facing Coleiro Preca’s presidency is that she still evidently feels that she has much more to give the country after only one year as minister responsible for social affairs.

She has set in motion many initiatives which, no doubt, are maturing but may still require her limitless energy, single-mindedness and dedication to the needy, the poor, the weak and, above all, to those emarginated from the mainstream of our society.

Coleiro Preca undoubtedly has an enormous social heart of gold, full of courage and, where necessary, is able to face mighty forces that may cross her path in doing what she feels is socially just.

It is difficult to think of any better person than Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca to preside over a new constitutional commission

Yet, she is now on the doorstep of the presidency and her first and paramount duty as president is to unite the entire nation, Maltese and Gozitans, males and females, as all of her predecessors managed to do with distinction.

In so managing to do, a number of her predecessors, most notably Agatha Barbara, Ugo Mifsud Bonnici and even Abela, could manage constitutional and political crises, enjoying the confidence of both parties and the nation as a whole.

Barbara faced the very difficult crisis arising from the 1981 ‘perverse result’ leading to the Opposition refusing to take their seats in the House of Representatives.

She offered the mediation of her high office and, eventually, after a slow and difficult process, negotiations set in, which eventually led to the important electoral reform of 1987.

Mifsud Bonnici had to face the crisis of the Labour government of Alfred Sant, which was eventually defeated by Dom Mintoff joining the Opposition on a vote of no confidence in the government.

A former Nationalist as president and a Labour prime minister on the verge of losing power collaborated constitutionally and no allegations of partisanship were ever levied on the presidency.

Abela, who before becoming president held high office in the Labour Party, likewise constitutionally collaborated with then Nationalist prime minister Lawrence Gonzi in the prolonged parliamentary crisis that eventually also led to a vote of confidence.

There needs much constitutional thought on the manner in which the Prime Minister is to “presidentialise” initiatives, which previously were firmly in his government plate and under his ultimate political and parliamentary responsibility.

There would need to be a wide participation from civil society and voluntary organisations in the workings of the presidential ‘social agenda’ and, without doubt, the political partisan participation needs be balanced out on a bipartisan level playing field.

Genuinely it is difficult to think of any better person than Coleiro Preca to preside over a new constitutional commission with the brief of the commissions and committees falling under her responsibility as minister, but constitutionalised to involve a national agenda.

Such a commission needs to learn from the difficulties which the Commission for the Administration of Justice has encountered.

It is strong on independence from the government aspect but toothless in some of its functions.

The proposed new social commission needs authority, independence and, above all, the commitment from both sides of the House to implement, on the basis of consensus, the policy recommendations of our new president’s social and national mission.

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