Acouple of weeks ago I wrote that once the next president was announced we would be in for an extended bout of vigorous whitewashing. Well, here we are. Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca is now on the fast track to santa subito canonisation. In what follows I shall break ranks with the troubadours and court bards.

My first problem is with what appears to be a one-track mind of the highest order. I wouldn’t wish to sound nasty, but Coleiro Preca simply isn’t a well-rounded person. On the contrary, she has actually made a virtue out of having no interests in life other than being viċin in-nies, combating il-faqar, and the like. She also seems to lack the slightest hint of a sense of humour and appears dour, joyless, tragic even, at all times.

Let me take a leaf out of the Prime Minister’s notebook and compare her with a couple of ‘normal’ past and present incumbents. President Abela, for example, is well known for his philanthropy but he is also interested in sport, among other things; certainly in his time at the Malta Football Association he brought much respectability to the organisation. He is also the type you can talk to about Mikiel Anton Vassalli (as I had the honour to do last Wednesday) without feeling silly.

Ugo Mifsud Bonnici may be a tad on the conservative side but he’s a thoroughly cultured person who will cite John Keats in the course of a conversation on Mediterranean history. His old age has done nothing to his sense of humour, and talking to him and Mrs Mifsud Bonnici is like talking to a honeymoon couple.

Anton Buttigieg was not exactly a whirlwind but he did write some very charming poems. His epigrams are especially witty and humorous. And so on.

Given that the main occupation of the president is to uphold the Constitution, all of this may seem beside the point. Only it isn’t, since the many public commitments of the post require a certain joie de vivre and an ability to at least seem interested and engaging.

Besides, the president is, in a sense, the moral custodian of the national patrimony, of which the palaces and pageantry are symbols. The least one expects is for the president to relate to this patrimony in ways that go beyond its use as a prop for viċin in-nies histrionics (of which we can expect heaps). I would like to think that President Abela spends some of his spare time stroking the pictures and furniture at San Anton.

If this sounds like an elitist argument, it’s actually the opposite. I find it both inaccurate and patronising to imagine that the only thing the poor aspire to is to spend their days contemplating their misery. Rather like the treasures found in our churches, the whole point of the national patrimony is a collective ownership that on occasion lends some colour to people’s lives. It’s part of the president’s job to purvey that colour.

The second thing that rubs me the wrong way is the Prime Minister’s comment that Coleiro Preca won’t be a ‘President taċ-ċerimonji’. I wish I could say I don’t believe him. Thing is, this is the kind of attitude that goes down well with teenagers and with people who have no understanding whatsoever of ritual. It’s also a bit rich of him to say so, given that a couple of months ago he was on television heralding a year of national anniversaries and celebrations.

Ċerimonji are essentially rituals of state. It is a necessary part of the president’s job to respect and preside over them. To pooh-pooh these rituals is to undermine the value of the presidency itself. If the Queen suddenly decided that bandanna was the new tiara, it’s the monarchy that would ultimately suffer.

There are two other reasons why I so detest this flippant attitude to ċerimonji. First, because it represents the kind of insufferable posturing we find in things like dress-down days, Pope Francis in a Fiat 500, and such.

Second, because it contains an inherent paradox. It’s a humility that is sustained by the very structures of privilege it claims to depart from. No-one would notice or care if I said I have no time for ċerimonji, simply because I’m not the president and I don’t live in a state palace.

There is a third thing I would like to question. The santa subito cause hinges on the beliefs that Coleiro Preca is the paragon of kuxjenza soċjali and that her ministerial über-career is the brightest light this island has ever seen.

First, I’m not sure it is at all possible to have a kuxjenza soċjali and at the same time oppose the introduction of divorce legislation. The absence of divorce meant untold emotional and material suffering to thousands of people caught up in broken marriages and annulment charades. I would have thought Coleiro Preca, viċin in-nies as she has always been, would have noticed this.

If the system really worked, Coleiro Preca’s style of petition-the-minister welfarism would quickly become redundant

Second, she hasn’t been a minister long enough for us to be able to assess her performance in any meaningful way. Tentatively, the indications are a mixed bag.

I asked a couple of friends of mine who work in migration-related NGOs and they were unanimous that her heart is in the right place. They also said she has done much to shake up the system for the better. She has also worked hard to revamp the institutional structures that have to do with children’s rights and such. That much is clear.

But let us also remember that Coleiro Preca’s ministerial career kicked off a year ago with a missing soap holder. Her approach to child poverty has been dubious at best. Having announced her target to reduce child poverty by 22,000 in a year, she went on television two weeks later to tell us she would throw some cash at, well, 22,000 people. I would call that the worst possible model of statistics-mongering.

Third, I’m not sure I like what Coleiro Preca represents. I have in mind the protagonism and triumphalism, the images of sleepless nights of hard work and human contact and never-ending queues outside her offices.

I don’t for a second doubt her honesty and good will. But there is a sense in which her way of doing politics is actually an indictment of the institutions she represents. The sociologist Dipankar Gupta makes a similar point about India and its army of (well-meaning and productive) Mahatmas, Mother Teresas, and heroic do-gooders.

Put simply, if the system really worked, Coleiro Preca’s style of petition-the-minister welfarism would quickly become redundant. The Prime Minister has described it as a model. I agree it’s a model to avoid.

I do and will continue to respect Coleiro Preca’s public roles. Only I refuse to think of her as a saint, and to produce yet another hagiography.

mafalzon@hotmail.com