In her letter ‘Rights of conscience’ (April 5), Margaret Bianchi took me to task in the matter of former president, George Abela’s overweening conscience for failing to differentiate between the “perspectives of this world” compared with the “eternal perspective of those who believe in the promise of eternal life”.

Let me assure her that, as a humble columnist trying to make sense of the “perspectives of this world”, I am only too well aware of the differences. The problem I was highlighting in my article (‘A discordant swansong’, April 2), to which Bianchi took such exception, was precisely that difference.

Under the Constitution, in “the perspective of this world”, Abela was bound to sign into law without delay any Bill passed by the House of Representatives on Third Reading. The President can legitimately refuse to sign a Bill into law if it violates the Constitution. But he has absolutely no right to plead personal conscience for otherwise not doing so.

If we accepted that the President’s “eternal perspective of those who believe in the promise of eternal life” (whatever that is, for except in places like Iran there is no moral or religious monopoly on this I know of) should prevail over his overriding duty to the Constitution he undertook to safeguard, we would truly be on the path to anarchy as – in the “perspective of this world” – he is bound by law always to act in accordance with the advice of the Cabinet.

The message I tried to convey in my article was that under our system of parliamentary democracy no President’s conscience can ever be allowed to be either present or paramount in the performance of his/her constitutional role. If personal conscience is to be his/her overriding guide, s/he should not be there.