Much has been said and written, and even more has not, regarding the nomination of Dr George Abela as President of this small nation of ours. This seemingly overwhelmingly popular decision has kicked off the year on a positive note. That’s great at first glance, but is it as great for everybody as we would be led to believe?
The decision was immediately hailed by most people as a great one for having managed to achieve national consensus, meaning the agreement of both sides of the House. But, even on the Sunday when the story first appeared, the first indications were confused, not less so by the complete absence of the item from the PN’s Sunday media.
Undercurrents there are, quite strong ones too, and transcending the political fence. Most Nationalist supporters are finding it pretty hard to stomach the choice of a Labour man for President, especially considering the one-seat Parliamentary majority, and many an eyebrow has been raised querying the appropriateness, if not the wisdom, of such a choice. On the other hand, the PL-inclined media are having a field day reporting on those within the PN ranks who have publicly indicated or aired their dissent. If you are so happy with this mature, unifying etc., etc. choice, why go out of your way to use it on front pages that smugly give prominence to these signs of disagreement on the other side? It does not take much to feel that the consensus achieved might not be as wide-ranging, uniform and deep as one might think, for a myriad reasons. Once the novelty of the idea wears off, and a sober and rational analysis sets in, as it has, the consensus might be queried, especially with a nomination that, unlike in previous years, came about a good three months before it was needed.
Therefore, after having been momentarily carried away on the euphoric bandwagon, some time for reflection, dispassionate and far-removed-from-cliché thinking, helps in the formation of a proper opinion. As usual, Fr Peter Serracino Inglott takes much less time than most of us to hit the proverbial nail on the head. His immediate reaction: “the unanimity in support… is pretty fake”, on the basis that he considers the consensus reached on a “person with a Labour affiliation nominated by the Nationalist Government to be no great achievement”, stands out for its clarity and directness.
The real achievement is not in the political party consensus apparently reached, but more in the courage and far-sightedness needed to come to such a decision, effectively straddling our partisan (I stop short of calling them political) divides and finding somebody with little enough baggage in his public life to be acceptable to both sides. And that is the crux of the matter. Notwithstanding all the hype about what a great man he is, and all the waxing lyrical over his (personal) qualities, the plain fact is that the acceptability of this man stems mainly from him having negligible political baggage. Now who else in public life in this highly politicised environment of ours can put forward that quality as a claim to fame?
His private life aside, however exemplary it may be, Dr Abela was always on the doorstep of great things in his public life. Somehow he never went in or was never invited in, until now that is. Media diggers are doing their utmost to find some mistake in his past or skeleton in his cupboard, but their success has to date been on the scale that we usually attribute to oil exploration on and around these islands. And what are we to expect from somebody whose political footprint is in the small sizes. Einstein once said that anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Promising he always was, but promising he remained. Promising in the Unions, in the then MLP and, for a time, he was also promising as a candidate for election as a Member of the European Parliament. But that is about all he ever was – losing the only testing election he ever contested, that for the then MLP leadership. And for a man on the fringes of public life until his sixties, to now be expected to all of a sudden assume centre stage, promising is just not enough. Unless, of course, we look at the Presidency as an ineffectual, purely ceremonial office, intended to give us something that is at least acceptable to all of us. Such an across-the-board acceptability, even at the expense of a more “politically correct” nominee, is in our, the national, interest. In which case, Dr Abela is the perfect choice.
Roberta is a PN candidate in the June 2009
European Parliament
elections.
[email protected]
www.roberta2009.eu