Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/286290
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 30 MARCH 2014 26 Opinion I could almost hate Mel Brooks for what he did to my appreciation of world history. Thanks to him, I can no longer read or even think about the French Revolution without those words drifting back to me from the Alhambra cinema sometime in the late 1980s. "It's good to be the King". The film was 'History of the World Part One', and Brooks played Louis XVI on the eve of his decapitation. I didn't get the irony at the time. Good to be king? Oh, absolutely. Especially when ascending towards the guillotine to the jeers of an angry mob... But still, even without knowledge of how the story ended – for Louis XVI, anyway – you can still appreciate the power of those words. Yes, of course it's good to be the King. Of course it's good to have unlimited power, without any of the responsibility that should go with it. So good, in fact, that others will invariably get jealous, and eventually wrest all that power and prestige for themselves through violence. At which point the cycle starts all over again. Well, the events of this week have amply demonstrated that it is not only 18th century French monarchs who considered themselves plenipotentiary and appointed by Divine decree and, therefore, unanswerable to any common mortal. Presidents of the Maltese Republic, past and present, have likewise all behaved in exactly the same way. It's good to be the President. For one thing, there is a legal impediment to actually being criticised (which, let's face it, is kind of nice); and much more importantly, Presidents seem to also think they are free to simply disregard all the laws of the land… starting with the Constitution, of which the same President is supposed to be custodian. By now you will surely have heard that the Civil Unions law has been effectively short-circuited by President George Abela's pre-emptive refusal to sign the bill. That's right: the proposed law (approved by parliament and, implicitly, by the electorate last March) conflicts with President Abela's much vaunted moral principles. The man who once candidly informed us that he "can't be everybody's President" has now decided to arbitrarily lengthen the list of minorities to be excluded from his Presidency. Having already made it abundantly clear that he is only the President of Malta's Catholic community – which incidentally means that he is not my President, nor President of the many other non-Catholic citizens of the Maltese republic – he has now flatly refused to be the President of Malta's gay community, too. But much more significant is President George Abela's apparent disregard for what is practically the only real Constitutional function his office actually serves. To put things bluntly, the Constitution does not make provisions to enable Presidents to simply pick and choose which articles of government legislation they approve and which they can abort on their own private initiative. If you don't believe me, consult the document itself. Here is the relevant excerpt: "72. (1) The power of Parliament to make laws shall be exercised by bills passed by the House of Representatives and assented to by the President. (2) When a bill is presented to the President for assent, he shall without delay signify that he assents. (3) A bill shall not become law unless it has been duly passed and assented to in accordance with this Constitution…." As you can see, there is nothing that allows the President to refuse to sign a law. And given that he doesn't actually have any other Constitutional obligations to speak of (unless you count flying off to do missionary work in Peru, at the height of a full-blown political crisis in his own country), this also means that Abela has effectively abdicated from all his legal obligations, while retaining both the title and the prestige of a President. What does this tell us about his attitude towards the Presidency? Well, it calls to mind Mel Brooks' take on the French monarchy in 1789. Power without responsibility. In this case, the power to simply sabotage national legislation at will – which by the way also implies supremacy over parliament: something not even the monarchs of old used to enjoy (at least, not after the Magna Carta) – but at the same time, full freedom to sidestep one's only Constitutional duties, without facing any consequences whatsoever. So yes, it is indeed good to be the President. Especially as, unlike Louis XVI, you also get to keep your head. Oh, and if it's any consolation, this perception of the Presidency is by no means limited to George Abela alone, though he has arguably taken it several steps further than any of his predecessors. In reaction to Abelas private 'revolution' against the present administration, two former presidents (Eddie Fenech Adami and Ugo Mifsud Bonnici) both argued that a President is well within his rights to precipitate a Constitutional crisis to safeguard his own private moral vision of the universe. Fenech Adami even said so in no uncertain terms. As President, he effectively blocked legislation on IVF because it conflicted with his Catholic views on procreation. And he explicitly threatened to precipitate a Constitutional crisis (his words, not mine) if ever presented with a divorce bill. But not all past Presidents reasoned the same way. I happen to remember what another former president – the late Guido de Marco – replied when asked what he would do if ever presented with a bill legalising Raphael Vassallo It's good to be the President