President Marie Louise Coleiro Preca said that the right to freedom of expression should not entitle people to break the fundamental rights of another person, namely the right to a family life and the right to privacy. This, she said, is what is happening and making the medium problematic.

Interviewed by The Malta Independent’s Head of News Rachel Attard on INDEPTH, The Malta Independent's online programme, the President said “If I were to challenge you in an argument, should I bring up stuff which is unrelated to the issue?  It seems we do not attack the argument but the person instead, through their families."

 

Pressed on the conflict between her recent statement calling for the cleaning up of Maltese politics and her past involvement with the infamous Labour government of the 1980s, the President said she did what she had to do in her capacity as the General Secretary of the Labour Party, and that always acted according to “duty, integrity and a sense of independence and awareness, which I have carried into my Presidency”.

She called for “honesty, independence, and integrity in every aspect of life and not just within politics”. It was important, she said, to begin to foster a sense of ethics is every facet of society. She stressed that she would like to see work ethics become part of the Maltese way of life.

It was also important that the public did not label all politicians as the same. She claims that everybody knows who the politicians who act with integrity and independence are.

Questioned as to whether the allegations of corruption that plague both political parties was the reason behind the lack of youth interest in politics, she pointed towards the lack of respect and bad blood between politicians as a reason for this.

When asked on her opinion of both leaders of the political parties, whom  President Colerio Preca meets with regularly, she said “I do not think I’m in a position to analyze, all I have to say is that both have their good qualities, and just like everyone else in the world they have their defects.”