President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca can only be applauded for her speech during the Republic Day investiture ceremony last Tuesday. She strode into political terrain not normally approached by presidents and it is difficult to disagree with a lot of what she said in a spirit of reflection on some of the national concerns of the day.
She was right, for instance, to denounce the disruptive influence of racism on the debate about migration, and to hint that deporting long-stay migrants would be wrong.
She is to be heeded when she points out that “it would be an atrocity” if the current healthy economic growth were not taken advantage of to lift people out of destitution.
Her appeals for people to come before profit with regard to property development, and for politicians to work together on a long-term vision for the environment, were spot on.
One could go on: reflecting her strong social conscience, her speech also ranged over domestic violence, human trafficking, health, education, the rights of children, even recycling, and she cannot be faulted for urging more action to improve citizens’ welfare in all these areas.
Ms Coleiro Preca then ventured, some would say bravely, into the thorny territory of political behaviour. She drew attention to the laws politicians enact for the benefit of all but lamented the “unrestrained partisanship and populism” that lowers people’s esteem for politics, and expressed “sincere concern” about the way “our politicians are behaving towards each other”.
The trouble is, in trying to stay meticulously above the political fray, as the President must, she has to use vague, neutral language that, while pointing fingers, cannot be more specific about who they are pointed at. All politicians? Surely not. Perhaps her intention is that those she has in mind will know who they are.
The President seems to have felt she must also limit the scope of her condemnation. The level of debate among politicians that she complained about is hardly the biggest of transgressions committed this year, a year of political scandal that has shocked the nation and sullied its name abroad. If the President is going to project herself as the voice of the nation’s conscience, she must be bolder than she was or avoid the subject altogether. Her message missed the full reality of the alarming slide in standards of public life, and as a result will probably fail to have any real impact.
Also, her outrage over the attacks on private lives taking place via social media, while well-intentioned, skirts the crucial distinction that should be made between private journalists and bloggers on the government payroll.
She does have a point, though, about young people being put off politics and public service by the behaviour they witness in politicians. She called on the young to be “activists for the truth and to participate in politics so as to ensure that, in future, our country will have leaders who portray, truthfully and honestly, the voices of the people they represent”.
But again, the argument needed to be taken further. To be fine examples to the young, the country’s leaders, those actually in power, must practise principled politics. Do they?
Do they exercise the moral values expected by the electorate? Are they trustworthy representatives? Do they respect the limits of their power?
Do they willingly subject themselves to the scrutiny of democratic institutions? Do they strive to preserve those institutions’ independence?
Are they worthy of a country that, as the President put it, aspires to become “a role model of democracy”? Or do they exemplify what she called the “scarcity of honesty and truth in political life”?
They know who they are. And so does the President.