It was first leaked at Labour’s annual drinks for the press – at that time it did not matter much, now it seems significant – and that was Lawrence Gonzi’s brainwave of appointing George Abela as the country’s President.

Since then, the bright beginning with smiles all around and the sight of the President jogging from San Anton to Valletta seemed to enthuse the entire country.

From then onwards, things somehow went into a steep decline – with family affairs being celebrated at presidential palaces and markers left for posterity, with various controversies and issues.

And then came the election and with it a new government and with it a speech from the throne, as we still call it. And there, George Abela’s presidency reached its nadir with slogans and attacks on the preceding administration instead of solid statesmanship and an approach to reunite the entire country, as a President ought to do.

The Opposition was still under the effect of the terrible beating it took at the polls, otherwise, in any similar occurrence, it would have stood up and left. It happened in the past when Labour walked out of the hall instead of listening to the Governor.

Since then, the President has been roundly criticized not just by supporters of the Opposition but even by people from other walks of life.

One always finds people who try and find the silver lining in such cases and many helpful voices tried to save the President. They said the speech is written by the Prime Minister (or someone for him) but then former President Eddie Fenech Adami pitched in and said that when he was president, he had some phrases to be changed (even though that was in a speech by a friendly PN administration). Others said the President was not given advance notice, but then someone revealed the speech had been delivered two days prior to the Opening of Parliament.

Then the President chose a band club to reply to the mounting criticism (yes, a band club, that’s the level of interaction with the grass roots) and said that in his pondered opinion, the Speech from the Throne ought to be read out by the prime minister who would have authored in the first place.

This presidential solution, like Solomon’s judgment, brings even more questions than it solves. What is the use of a ‘Speech from the Throne’ if it becomes a Speech by the Prime Minister, no different to making statements to the House?

What’s the use of a ‘Speech from the Throne’ if we have one by the PM? What’s the use of all that ceremonial at the Opening of Parliament? What’s the use of a President at all, if he does not even make a ‘Speech from the Throne’?

Instead of all this to-ing and fro-ing, the matter is actually very simple: The President made a mistake when he accepted to read such a partisan speech and he should have the decency to admit it was an error of judgment and should not have been made. And that whoever wrote the speech (formally, the prime minister) made an error of judgment as well.

We have just seen our neighbours, in the Italian Parliament, coming to an agreement that none but 87-year-old Giorgio Napolitano could serve the country as President in the dire situation Italy finds itself. President Abela should watch and learn from his illustrious Italian counterpart – the super partes and stern moral high ground, the gravitas that goes with the job, the use of clear language to express oneself in terms all can understand and concepts expressed in clear terms to show what the national interest demands. That is why President Napolitano castigated parties and politicians and they all applauded him on Monday.

Instead, our President seems to have engaged in damage limitation by opening up the palace for children. This is his last year as President (unless, as Napolitano he gets re-chosen) and perhaps instead of inviting Mickey Mouse to the Palace and trying to get one and all forget what John Bundy used to say about the country as a whole, the President should try to do better in the last year he has left.