AWGURI, SUR PRESIDENT

I’m writing this after having seen the headlines on most papers while picking up mine at Joe Cini’s in Xaghra on Sunday.

As I write, the nomination of Dr George Abela, an old friend, and great adversary in our professional lives, to the Presidency is still technically speculation, though I doubt there’s much that remains doubtful. In any event, while this blog is on the web-site, the story will have been confirmed or otherwise officially, which means that either a number of editors will be left with egg on their faces or they will have been proved right in deciding to run with the leaks and whispers that clearly were going their way.

I’m pretty confident that the latter will prove to be the case.

So, all the speculation about who is going to get the nod is coming to a close – no more discussion on whether it should be a poet, a baker or a candlestick maker, a politician or a non-politician, a man or a woman.

One could, of course, have a bit of a post-mortem about whether this bloke or that bloke would have been a good nominee – but it wouldn’t really be fair.

Or would it?

Would it be fair to ruminate on whether Prof Oliver Friggieri, for instance, would have carried popular sentiment and made a “good President”? Leaving aside this gentleman’s probity and intellectual stature, both of which are manifest and virtually unparalleled, would he have made a good choice?

A discussion – while always verging dangerously on the ad hominem – of this question would lead to a discussion on the nature of the Presidency, which is always a conversation worth having.

A “good President”, it is said, needs to have the respect of the people.

But does he, or she? A look at the citizens who led us over the years will give cause for dispute, perhaps not out loud, over the universal application of this platitude. Given the polarisation of the country on political lines, a phenomenon losing starkness but nonetheless remaining potent, it is difficult to accept that with the exception of Sir Anthony Mamo, and to an extent Mr Paul Xuereb (though he was Acting President, a slightly different kettle of fish) the other incumbents were the recipients of universal love and respect in the bars and corridors of the country.

Would someone from the non-political field get the love? Perhaps, but would the Presidency then become merely a ceremonial job, even more than it is already. Without the touch of controversy that political baggage always brings with it, would the role pale into insignificance, a result hardly to be wished for?

The mere fact that the question of the nominee is discussed so much renders it important, so maybe we need to keep the question prickly.

Judge Giovanni Bonello was mentioned, as someone outside the direct political sphere and with the credentials and bags of them to spare. Again, there is no question that he would have been an excellent choice and the simple fact that he has been mentioned makes him a tough act to follow for Dr Abela.

Judge Bonello is a tough act in many contexts, not least of which is the political arena, where he has fought the good fight through the Courts, both as litigator and, more recently, and spectacularly, as judge.

It’s unfair of me to be putting it this way, because it might be taken as implying that Dr Abela is in some way a second choice or something like that – I have no knowledge of the order of the nominees in the PM’s mind, or even if there was such an order,

After all, the speculation all came from us, the great unwashed, none of whom have the PM’s ear.

Along with the two intellectual leaders I’ve just referred to, we had the usual crop of political heavyweights being given a nod by the commentators. Dr Louis Galea and Mrs Giovanna Debono, both Big Beasts of the Nationalist Herd, were mentioned, as was Mr Lino Spiteri, though perhaps he was being touted as “the acceptable face of Labour” in the context of his animosity towards Dr Alfred Sant and the way his (Spiteri’s) various memoirs portray him (Spiteri) as being perhaps not so antagonising to the Nationalist camp.

Would they have made “good Presidents”?

Well, again, the question, which must be directed away from the persons to the issue, is whether a politician, who then becomes an ex-politician, and permanently so, is appropriate in the role. On past experience, it seems that it hasn’t been a bad experiment, so is it time to change?

Well, perhaps the nomination of Dr Abela is a step in this direction. Perhaps it is not, as there’s nothing to say that it constitutes a trend, much as a single swallow doesn’t make a summer (sorry) and anyway, you can hardly accuse Dr Abela of being not a politician, for all that he has many other claims to distinction.

Talking of politicians as nominees, I almost choked on my morning egg and fried slice of dead pig when I came across Alfred Mifsud writing in the Independent on Sunday about how the PN owed Dr Alfred Sant the honour of nominating him as President.

I was about to hit the keys and pound out a resounding skip-load of effluent in the general direction of Mifsud, but his closing paragraphs, about how it was thanks to Dr Sant that the PN were in Government for so long and how grateful they should be, made me think again.

If anyone ever needed a lesson in when to clam up, it’s Sant.

But, getting back to the Presidency, there’s much to be said for making the point that, whoever is nominated should once nominated be accepted as the only possible nominee, so important is it for a nation to have a single focal point for some basic unity.

When someone like Dr Abela gets nominated, it’s so much easier for this to be the case, though.