This bunch have a somewhat strange grasp of the import of the Presidency.
It seems that the incoming President is going to take on something of an executive role, running a couple of social policy-affecting committees and generally being "accessible to the people", presumably in order to act in their interests.
In and of itself, this is not a bad thing so far as it goes, but if Ms Coleiro Preca wants to do it, she should not have accepted the nomination.
In the same way, you might say, as Dr Mercieca should not have accepted to become a Parliamentary Secretary if he was so eager to remain an excellent eye doctor. Likewise Dr Farrugia, as at the time of writing this, Minister for Health, he who had shed a tear when he was wrenched away from his patients by appointment to high office of state, should not have accepted nomination.
By dint the fact that I link these three episodes together you can come to the conclusion that the Presidency, by the way the PM has messed around with it, has been devalued to the level of a Ministry or Parliamentary Secretariat.
The President, however, is not an extension of the Government, he or she sits above the fray, a wise counsellor who should not get his or her hands dirty by having to deal with common mortals. This is not because there's anything wrong with getting one's hands dirty, it's because the Office of the President should not concern itself with issues that can perfectly well be handled by others.
To be getting along with the argument, what if some loony PM decides to put an even loonier President in charge of the Army and the Catering Corps? What then? All he needs to do is cite the Coleiro Preca precedent, after all.
And just to underline the peculiar take the Government has on the Presidency, the news broke today that President Abela is refusing to sign the "gay marriage" Bill into law.
His Excellency has every right to his convictions, of course, but it is not open to the Government to ignore the issue, knowing it will go away in a couple of weeks. If the President, under the conventions to our Constitution as I understand them, has moral grounds for opposing a law, the President must resign, honourably, even if he has only ten minutes to run in his term.
Conversely, the Government is obliged to push the issue, because if it fails to, it is disrespecting the Presidency by painting it as yet another institution, on the lines of the Police, MEPA and so many others, which can be given the "arrangarsi" treatment, adopting the "u iva, let's close an eye or two" standards that have come to plague us.
Imagine what storms would have broken over our hapless heads if it had been a Nationalist Government in office and the President refused to sign the Bill.
As always, Labour are held to standards which are way lower.