I never imagined the second republic would take off so soon. Or so shabbily. President George Abela’s refusal to assent to the Civil Unions Bill leaves us with a serious crisis that no amount of benevolence, Xarabank fêtes, and book-signing events can mask.

I have to assume that it is indeed the case that Abela refused to sign the Bill. The President’s office and the Prime Minister have so far kept mum about it. The best we’ve seen is a round of half-smiles and sidelong glances. That is totally unacceptable, given that people have the right to know exactly what is happening to the laws enacted by their representatives. Still, it leaves me with no option but to assume.

The fact that Abela’s term is all but over may be convenient for the matter at hand (the Civil Unions Bill can wait a week), but it makes no difference whatsoever in the longer term.

That’s also because the President-designate (she who dislikes ceremonies unless they are at least six hours long) has already said she would have a problem with a Bill that made abortion legally possible. She probably thinks that the example is far-flung and steeped in collective horror enough for us not to mind. But she’s wrong, for two reasons.

First, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca will be President for the next five years. There’s no saying that what appears to be unthinkable now will not be deemed acceptable then. One easily forgets that it is only a few years since the country was busy mocking Emmy Bezzina for his pro-divorce ideas. As for civil unions, and especially some of the rights that come with them, I doubt there is a general consensus even now.

Thinking beyond our shores for a moment, Malta is actually more isolated on abortion than it ever was on same-sex adoptions. The point is that politics is all it takes for the unthinkable to become acceptable. Just in case Coleiro Preca wishes to double-check before going on television to tell us about her unshakeable morality, I think she would find that the right of citizens to change their mind is called ‘democracy’.

Second, what one might think about the horrors of abortion is completely irrelevant here. What matters is that the President-designate has openly told us that, in principle at least, there are issues on which she would have a problem with a parliamentary vote. That leaves our democracy with an Achilles heel. But perhaps it’s all nicely in line with the ‘l-iktar vulnerabbli fost il-vulnerabbli’ (‘the most vulnerable of the vulnerable’) slogan.

It doesn’t help that former presidents Ugo Mifsud Bonnici and Eddie Fenech Adami have publicly supported George Abela’s position. Their support, coupled with Coleiro Preca’s musings, show us that the problem is both deep-seated and endemic.

I would argue, first, that our presidents have a tendency to consistently misread their role. Which is strange, since the Constitution is very clear on this one. It is, after all, based on the British model. The official website of the British monarchy puts it thus: “The ability to make and pass legislation resides with an elected Parliament, not with the Monarch”. Not a shade of grey in sight, shall we say.

Article 72 of the Maltese Constitution states, first, that the power to make and enact laws resides with Parliament, and, second, that “when a Bill is presented to the President for assent, he shall without delay signify that he assents”.

The verb ‘shall’ makes it clear that the President has no option but to assent, and to do so quickly. Which makes sense, given that the President is not an elected representative of the people. A milder verb would have left us with a potential dictatorship.

There is, as far as I can tell, no mention of conscience, natural law, moral fibre, children brought up by gays, dead foetuses, or such. The spirit of the Constitution is democratic representation, and that’s that.

The only situation in which this simple equation would collapse is that of a law which the President deems unconstitutional. That’s because the main role of the President is to serve as the guardian of the Constitition.

Such a law would set up a legitimate conflict between that role and the need to ‘assent without delay’. The Civil Unions Bill is not remotely unconstitutional. Or if the President thinks it is, he’s not saying.

The point is that politics is all it takes for the unthinkable to become acceptable

What that means is that the guardian of the Constitution is now possibly also in breach of it. Splendid.

There’s a second problem with all this presidential moral high ground. The premise is that our presidents have a right to their moral principles, whatever they might be. (I’ve never once in this piece taken issue with Abela’s beliefs on civil unions, or Coleiro Preca’s on abortion.) Surely then, it would be too much to expect them to sanction legislation that goes against those principles?

Not really. The Constitution makes it clear that, save for the exception I mentioned earlier, the President has no choice but to ‘asset without delay’. Since there cannot be responsibility without choice, it follows that the President cannot and shouldn’t be held responsible, morally or otherwise, for the laws enacted in Parliament.

It would therefore be illogical to accuse Abela of having lapsed. By analogy, it would be daft to accuse Queen Elizabeth (also technically the head of the armed forces) of having gone to war against Iraq. And even if there is a hell, and if civil unions are the surest route to it, the armchair by the fireplace would belong to Joseph Muscat, not Abela.

Whichever way I look at it, I’m genuinely troubled to see our presidents, whose office I respect tremendously, so serially and completely misread the basic principles of the Constitution and moral responsibility.

There is but one small scientific dividend. We have known since MacDougall that the human soul weighs a precise three-fourths of an ounce (21 grammes, in González Iñárritu’s 2003 film version). What with morality and conscience apparently limited to things like couples, sex, reproduction, and such (no president has ever experienced any pangs on any other matter), we now also know which part of the human body it resides in.

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