The government, through the President’s traditional ‘speech from the throne’ at yesterday’s opening of the new legislature, pledged that it will begin the process leading to the long-awaited Constitutional Convention.
The pledge, of course, had been made back in the 2013 electoral campaign by then Opposition leader Joseph Muscat. The fact that the election was called more than a year early may have scuttled plans to hold the convention, to a certain extent, by the end of the last legislature, but Joseph Muscat’s lofty plans to create a Second Republic are once again afoot.
The President yesterday augured that the new and improved Constitution resulting from the forecast convention will be a legacy of this 13th legislature of the Republic and a ‘tool that unites the country’. But that appears to be something of a pipe dream considering the fact that the convention has not yet even been able to get off the ground because of acrimony between the government and the Opposition – and that is even before discussions begin on what, exactly, the changes to the Constitution will be or what they will entail.
If for no other reason, the assembling of the Constitutional Convention the government has been promising is an absolute necessity to redefine the country’s constitutional neutrality to meet the exigencies of this day and age.
Malta’s neutrality, which had been crafted in and for different times, was strongly challenged during the 2011 Libyan revolution and it is being challenged today as the world bands together to combat the growing nemesis of terrorism.
There are, of course, several other areas of the Constitution that deserve updating, tweaking or complete redrafting and there is ample scope to do so within the remit of the Constitutional Convention that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has been speaking of since at least 2011.
The Constitutional Convention will bring together civil society, political parties and it will possibly gather the views of the population as a whole.
The Opposition also has a lot to gain from such a Convention, where some of the numerous proposals contained in its policy paper on good governance published last year require constitutional changes. Reacting to the Opposition’s 109-point good governance document, the Prime Minister has said those changes being proposed that were of a constitutional nature, of which there are several extremely valid proposals, could be discussed within the remit of the upcoming Constitutional Convention.
Although the Prime Minister has been speaking about holding such a Convention since back in his Opposition days, little has been said of it since the 2013 election – except for the government’s announcement in March 2013 of the appointment of Franco Debono, the Opposition’s bête noir, as its chairman.
On the face of it, it is extremely positive that the Prime Minister had recently invited Dr Busutill to withdraw the Opposition’s reservations on the Constitutional Convention, but below the surface is the fact that the government had appointed a highly divisive character as the convention’s chair.
If there was any sincerity to the Prime Minister’s invitation, he would have invited the Opposition leader in for talks on their differences vis-à-vis the Convention and on who is to lead it.
This did not happen. With the Opposition apparently dead set against Dr Debono chairing the convention – given his more than chequered history with the PN – it is clear that the Prime Minister may later be able to turn around and accuse the Opposition of having refused to play ball.
If this is indeed the case, perhaps the Opposition should call the government’s bluff, swallow its pride and accept Debono to chair the convention. After all, does it really matter who holds the gavel?
It is hoped that the PN’s and PL’s differences of opinion over the composition of the Constitutional Convention, and any other teething problems that may be holding it back, are thrashed out so that both parties can work together on good governance, which is, after all, the very epitome of the national interest.
As the President, or rather as the government said through the President, yesterday, “Constitutional reforms are a time of national unity. They are moments of maturity, when the people rise above all that divides them and embrace what unites them.”
So by all means, let’s have some of this unity, maturity and rising above divisions. That would be a welcome relief.