The ceremonies, swearing-in and outpouring of good-will over, the long experiment begins this morning.
No experiment is ever easy – this one more than others because nothing remotely like it has ever been tried.
It does not concern whether the President will deliver on the social responsibilities that have been extended to her.
She will give it her all. She has the necessary knowledge, the willpower and the energy.
Her rate of work, as an Opposition MP and government minister, had become legendary.
There should be no need for her to meet the crack-of-dawn and late-evening timelines she had set for herself.
As the President’s Engagements item in The Sunday Times of Malta regularly shows, including yesterday, the President should normally be able to make time for non-presidential work. And she surely will.
What the experiment will have to prove is whether the President and the Minister for Social Services can co-exist smoothly in their functions. Both start off with the utmost good intent.
The President has carefully laid out that her social work is not – cannot be – of an executive nature.
It is the minister who will remain responsible for such executive factors as are embedded in the functions carried out by the President. She will be careful where she treads.
Minister Michael Farrugia, on his part, is a gentleman known for his well-maintained equilibrium.
I doubt that any difficulties that may arise will be of any deep personal nature.
In that regard, solutions will be found without necessarily externalising the problems.
What will be more challenging will be potential problems of a bureaucratic nature.
What the experiment will have to prove is whether the President and the Minister for Social Services can co-exist smoothly in their functions
President and minister have their staff to carry out the necessary work under their direction. That is where sparks can fly, though the two masters will make it clear that they will brook no nonsense, that collaboration in harmony and serenity must be the name of the game.
The worst thing that could happen will be if early differences regarding space take too long to iron out and, more so, if leaks and gossip are not snuffed out before they ignite small fires, which could rapidly spread.
The experiment will be carried out within the possibility that such disturbing potential clouds might arise over it.
Hopefully not. Once the experiment has been decided upon, it is essential that it proceeds successfully.
For that to happen, aside from the potential pitfalls suggested above, it will also be necessary not to raise expectations unduly.
If any criticism can be made of the story so far is that the fairytale essence of Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca’s profile has been much more than emphasised.
There can be no doubt about where her heart lies in respect of the vulnerable of our society. Nor can it be said that the government will hold back from trying to implement such noble objectives and to continue the war on poverty she started in her eventful year as a dynamic minister.
The task will be to converge objectives and commitment into meaningful action, which has to be taken at the executive level in the context of the financial resources available. Time will tell as always, probably sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile, the opening chapter in this experiment has closed without a hint of a reply to the basic question that underlies it: why did Prime Minister Joseph Muscat trigger it off?
I do not buy the suggestion that he wanted to give the people the best President he could identify in the circumstances.
He is first and foremost a politicians who calculates every action he takes. The roots of the presidential calculations run deep and must have a source.
I confess it is beyond my ability to identify it.