Franco Debono does not believe he should be considered by anyone a stumbling block to constitutional reform, the former Nationalist Party MP said.
Dr Debono was appointed to head the convention for constitutional reform soon after Labour was elected to power in 2013.
His appointment did not go down well with the PN, still sour after the former MP had brought down the previous government, which meant the reform processwas stultified.
Last month Opposition leader Simon Busuttil suggested the President should chair the constitutional reform convention.
But the former MP yesterday was unfazed when asked whether he would be ready to step aside. Dr Debono said the PN had in its document on good governance unveiled last year embraced most of the constitutional reforms he had proposed in the previous legislature.
“Many of the issues I had with the PN stemmed from the fact that the party did not embrace constitutional reform, but today the PN and I are on the same page in relation to constitutional reform,” he said.
Dr Debono said he took note of the Opposition leader’s suggestion but insisted he was just an appointee to the post.
He added, though, that a core principle of the PN was to put the individual at the centre of politics. “You cannot simply take the ideas and discard the individual.”
However, he said the PN had no problem voting for the law regulating political party financing, which in many ways reflected a draft he had prepared under the previous legislature and which was put on hold.
Dr Debono was answering questions after unveiling the results of a survey on constitutional awareness commissioned by the Committee for Constitutional Awareness, which he chairs.
The survey found that one-quarter of respondents, mostly men and young people, did not know whether Malta had aconstitution or they simply believed there was no constitution.
The rest displayed varying degrees of knowledge on the Constitution. The largest cohort, 28 per cent, put themselves in the middle of the way on a scale of 10 when asked how informed they felt.
However, 75 per cent said it was quite or very important to them to be informed about the Constitution.
The survey used a sample size of717 respondents.
The committee, which meets under the aegis of the President, is made up of lawyers Veronique Dalli, Claire Bonello, Austin Bencini and Ray Mangion, social commentator Andrew Azzopardi, col-umnist Martin Scicluna, writers Trevor Zahra and Oliver Friggieri and Prof. Saviour Chircop.