In the week in which civil unions were legalised, and gay couples were officially permitted to apply to adopt, there must be several politicians, on both sides of the adoption divide, who can see themselves reflected in the words of Martin Luther King Jr: “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

You may have noticed, however, that King actually talks about ‘conscience’. It is clear that, for him, conscience is closely connected to the taking of a principled position. In the Maltese gay adoption debate, though, conscience and principle have been strangely opposed. The debate was a good one for ‘principle’ but a bad one for ‘conscience’.

Throughout the debate, it’s been deemed legitimate, praiseworthy and brave to invoke and defend principle. But invoking conscience, as former president George Abela seems to have done, and defending it, as former presidents Eddie Fenech Adami and Ugo Mifsud Bonnici certainly did, have been deemed illegitimate, irresponsible and self-indulgent.

What’s up? Was King confused in invoking conscience? Or are we confused when opposing it to principle.

Ordinarily I don’t like to pander to our sneaking suspicion of ourselves but Maundy Thursday, the day commemorating Judas Iscariot, seems like a good occasion to make an exception. King was right and we’re confused. Conscience without principle is nothing; principle without conscience is dangerous.

And freedom of conscience is a pivot of a free, open society. In a debate with the open society at its heart, the political character of conscience should have been clarified. Instead, it was obscured.

One reason has been the general commentary on the report that Abela signalled to Joseph Muscat that he would refuse to sign the law.

The commentariat largely assumed this meant that he would effectively be vetoing the law while remaining president. Why else the ink spilt on saying that he had no right to do this?

The commentariat made the same assumption about Fenech Adami’s and Mifsud Bonnici’s defence of conscience. That is, that the two former presidents were defending the right of a president to veto a law – despite there being no such right in the Constitution.

If that is indeed what they were doing, then it would be correct to describe the former presidents’ invocation of conscience as self-indulgent and irresponsible. But it’s clear that they were doing something else altogether: defending the duty of a president to resign rather than sign a law that violated his conscience. (If anyone is in any doubt, just ask them.)

What Abela did with respect to the civil union and adoption law was what Fenech Adami did before him with a potential IVF law: indicate to the prime minister that if the law passed he would have a presidential resignation on his hands. Parliament would not have been overruled; but it would have had to find a new president.

Muscat, like Lawrence Gonzi before him, shrank from this scenario. Not to avoid a constitutional crisis, because there would have been none; the Constitution would continue working in the selection of a new president.

What the two prime ministers would have had, however, would have been a political crisis.

In both cases, the presidential resignation would have been a rallying call for mobilising those opposed to a controversial law. An unprecedented event has unforeseeable consequences. And prime ministers like to avoid those. Gonzi was already perched atop a restive parliamentary group. Muscat correctly calculated he could sit Abela out.

Conscience without principle is nothing; principle without conscience is dangerous

In Abela’s case, the commentariat was not content with missing what had actually happened. It continued by stating that the President has no right to freedom of conscience.

If this were true, it would be absurd. Modern society has freedom of conscience – that is, freedom from blind obedience to someone else’s principles – at its heart. Large parts of our Constitution are dedicated to defending this freedom. There is therefore something frankly ridiculous in saying that the President who defends the Constitution, which enshrines this freedom of conscience, gives up such freedom.

It’s one thing to say he cannot overrule Parliament. In this he’s no different from any functionary whose duty is to bring into effect collectively-taken decisions. But those functionaries retain their freedom of conscience. Why should the President be different?

How did we get to the point where it sounds reasonable to argue that he should be? I think it has to do with a misunderstanding of conscience, which even its defenders sometimes betray.

When King referred to conscience he did not mean a prim, little inner voice. Or an internal policeman, who obliges us to obey the law even when no one is looking. Conscience is not the implant of an external authority that subjugates our free personality and demands blind obedience. It’s not the remote control of a foreign power.

It’s rather something so bound up with our personality that not to obey it is to betray ourselves. The open society is one in which people do not have to betray themselves.

That said, for King it is not enough to follow one’s conscience and be true to oneself, no matter what. Nothing is more dangerous, he wrote, than ‘sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity’.

He didn’t think of following one’s conscience as always right, simply because it expressed what one believed. It would always be wrong not to follow one’s conscience. Sometimes, however, it is also wrong to follow it.

That reference to conscientious stupidity shows that King thought of conscience as something very different from an internal policeman.

Conscience is more like principle informed by good sense (as well as courage and justice).

In other words, conscience isn’t something that comes into play only on rare occasions. It’s exercised in every decision in which principle is weighed in the light of one’s sifted experience and reading of the political game. It draws attention to itself when it dissents but it’s also conscience that urges compromise or giving in for a larger good.

We rightly think our presidents need to be principled and in possession of good judgement. But that is what it is to have a conscience. They couldn’t carry out even their mundane work without one.

It’s a funny old world. The idea that a President owes Parliament blind obedience reproduces a moral doctrine that modernity rejects: the idea that there should be blind obedience at all to any authority.

Instead of protesting against presidential consciences, we should instead see how conscience and principled public life are fundamentally related.

Conscience without principle is nothing. Principle without conscience is dangerous. It can justify tyranny.

ranierfsadni@europe.com