Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1435356
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 DECEMBER 2021 OPINION Raphael Vassallo What's worse for our 'social well-being'? Cannabis… or a governability crisis? NOT, mind you, that we really had to reduce matters to such a stark, binary choice to begin with… but, well, that is precisely what happened this very week. One minute we were discuss- ing a bill to overhaul Malta's drug policies concerning can- nabis (in other words: a per- fectly routine updating of na- tional legislation, of the kind which happens – or should happen – in all democracies, all the time…) Next thing we know, there are public calls for the President of the Republic to block any such legislation from being enacted at all: even after its eventual approval by the House of Rep- resentatives. Honestly, though: has it not even remotely occurred, to any of the people making this irre- sponsible demand, that such a course of action would be far, FAR more harmful to the coun- try's (ahem) 'social well-being', than any amount of legalized dope-smoking… if not any form of legalized drug-taking whatsoever? Guess not, huh? Ok, tell you what… let's rewind a little. Truth be told, George Vella is hardly the first President of the Republic to have ever faced this sort of pressure; indeed, the issue has been sporadically resurfacing, every five years or so, for at least 20 years now. So let's start with a couple of historical examples. For some reason, it has become custom- ary for journalists to ask every single newly-appointed Mal- tese President – at least since Guido de Marco; possibly even earlier – whether they would 'approve a (hypothetical) law legalizing abortion in Malta'. And one by one, all our Pres- idents returned exactly the same answer: De Marco, Eddie Fenech Adami, George Abela, Marie-Louise Colerio, George Vella… all of them declared that, under those circumstanc- es, 'they would sooner resign'. Please note, however: 're- sign'…. not 'block the law, and remain President' (which is what both the MUMN, and the Dean of the University's Facul- ty of Social Wellbeing, seem to be suggesting)… But never mind that for now; and let us also overlook the sheer irrelevance of the ques- tion itself… in a country where no political party, great or small, has ever actually pro- posed legalizing abortion to begin with (at least, not until Marlene and Godfrey's pri- vate member's bill last January; and not counting more recent, microscopic parties such as 'Volt'). And yet, notwithstanding the sheer lack of contextual real- ism in which that question is always asked… it has somehow become the 'gold standard' of how Maltese Presidents have been perceived ever since. Which brings us to the first of many problems surround- ing this misconception. For starters, it implies that Maltese presidents DO actually have the legal option to back out of their Constitutional obliga- tions at will… even if – quite frankly – they don't. Besides: if we do make the mistake of saddling the Pres- idency with executive powers that it was never meant to pos- sess… the implications would go far beyond the government's ability to legislate on any giv- en issue – be it abortion, IVF, gay rights, or cannabis (all of which, incidentally, have been subjected to similar treatment by former Presidents). To appreciate why, we need only look at some of the real instances where the exact same threat was not only made; but also carried out. To the best of my knowledge, only two Presidents have ever successfully blocked legislation in Malta. The first was Eddie Fenech Adami, who threatened to resign over a 2005 bill to reg- ulate IVF… with the result that the new law had to wait until after his Presidency, to even be tabled in Parliament (let alone debated, and approved). The second was George Abe- la: who, in 2014, used the exact same tactic to block the Civil Unions Law (which likewise had to be postponed until the appointment a new President, Marie-Louise Colerio). But the two cases are not en- tirely analogous. Eddie Fenech Adami may have delayed the final approval of the IVF bill for around four or five years… during which time, of course, the entire sector was left com- pletely unregulated. But George Abela took the same stance several steps fur- ther: by flat-out refusing to sign a bill that had already been approved by the House (the only Maltese President, as far as I am aware, to have ever done so). Why, then, did it not precipi- tate a cataclysmic crisis, of the kind I loosely described above? Simple, really: because the gov- ernment of the day timed its approval of that law, to coin- cide (almost literally) with the eve of George Abela's last day in office. In practical terms, then, the Civil Unions Bill was only de- layed for a few months… al- lowing both government, and Abela himself, to emerge from that dilemma with no real loss of face. Had the timing worked out slightly differently, however; had that bill been approved in Abela's first two years as Pres- ident (as was the case with Ed- die and IVF), instead of his last two days… … well, this is how Fenech Adami himself explained the possible consequences, at the time: "If a President does not agree to give his assent to a Bill, there are only two options. Either resign, or face an im- peachment motion." Effectively, this the situation that both Dr Andrew Azzopar- di, and the MUMN, are (rather unkindly, it must be said) try- ing to corner President George Vella into. Only this time round, it is not because the is- sue in question – cannabis re- form, remember? – challenges the President's religious/con- scientious beliefs, in quite the same way as IVF so clearly did to Eddie Fenech Adami, or gay rights to George Abela… Oh, no. Those entities want to precipitate a full-blown Con- stitutional crisis – exposing, in the process, the sheer extent of our country's democratic defi- ciencies - simply because they themselves happen to disagree with the stated aims of the pro- posed reform. And for reasons which are almost too childish to even bother mentioning, too. In the MUMN's case, it is because of concerns with 'cannabis con- sumption at the work-place'… even though there is nothing in the new law that actually pre- vents companies – including hospitals – from establishing their own protocols to deal with drug-use among staff (as, after all, they already do with alcohol). In Azzopardi's case, on the other hand… well, it appears as though he has run out of any legitimate arguments against the bill; and is now launching a desperate, last-ditch effort of his own, to block the legisla- tion in any way he possibly can. What both those approach- es have in common, though, is that they simply disregard a somewhat crucial detail: that the same 'cannabis reform' they are trying to sabotage, was part of the Labour Party's elec- toral manifesto in 2017. As such, it has been pre-emp- tively approved by the single largest electoral majority this country has ever seen: some- thing which cannot be said for either Andrew Azzopardi's endless pontifications on Face- book… or even the MUMN's (altogether more legitimate) concerns. Much more seriously, how- ever, the same course of action