Darleen, the person at the centre of the current issue regarding President George Abela and the Community Chest Fund, is a sweet, soft-spoken girl.

I had occasion to meet her at the beginning of President Abela’s mandate when I was invited to go for an interview to explain how the Community Chest Fund (CCF) works and what it does.

It was clear she meant well and that the hard-luck cases she was hearing from the people who approach the CCF for help had badly affected her peace of mind.

This is true and other people have made the same remark in recent weeks. Whatever the statistics say, politicians, for instance, who ventured into people’s homes in the long election campaign have their horror stories to tell, of completely inadequate houses, of people eking out a living with no job and not enough money to begin to do what the house or residence requires. And, of course, when medicines are needed and doctors have to be paid, then the situation becomes desperate.

I can only add that there is a special hell where people in the grip of usurers live, when they somehow succumb to the wiles of crooks who lend them money to save them from one burning issue only then to make them slaves where the money lent has to be repaid at a huge interest.

But in the light of what has been revealed over the past days, I have come to understand that Darleen ventured in what for her were uncharted waters and was given the wrong advice.

As a result we now have most of Malta believing that Darleen tried to get CCF help in her studies in Italy.

The President’s Office has replied that she declined the CCF’s help. It is rather strange that this was either not reported to the CCF board, and that no minutes of this could be proffered.

Then it was said that CCF had helped other individuals before. Again, this does not make things any better.

Then the Prime Minister saw fit to intervene and to absolve the President and his Office from any wrongdoing, casting some aspersions on ‘the usual suspects’.

Then the President himself was invited on television and he tried to defend his and his Office’s actions in this story. As he had done when he was criticized for reading a very partisan speech at the opening of Parliament and had felt, some weeks later, that he had to justify himself when he spoke at a band club on a feast day, the choice of time and place was never his forte.

The damage control abilities of our President leave much to be desired. But more than that, I have come to think that rash decisions from which one is then free to repent at leisure, have become the order of the day at the Palace.

This Darleen business seems to be a case in point. I do not agree with those who seem to have concluded that the Palace has become a hotbed of opportunists who use state funds, residences, etc for their own personal benefits. But there have been a series of incidents, which both singly and even more collectively are giving this impression to the country. This is not right and, rather than using up air time to explain until there are no more explanations to be given, even at this late stage the signal must be given that things will not remain as they have been, or as the general impression has been given that they are.

It is in itself quite remarkable and bad form for the President to have become an issue of contention and public comment.

I have come to believe that the cause of this mischief is the CCF. I acknowledge and am ready to believe that President Abela genuinely wanted to boost the CCF profile and to turn it into a huge money-collecting machine from which help might be given.

But there should have been someone at the President’s elbow whispering to him that a President must not create precedents that successors will be unable to follow. For instance, can the next President be chosen on the basis of being able to jog all the way from San Anton to Valletta just because President Abela was able to do that?

There are a multitude of money collecting operations in Malta, all of them with the highest of intentions. Did the President and the CCF need to come in as well? CCF was quite clearly a help and a boon to the people it helped, but it was never meant or intended to substitute all the rest.

Emphasis has been made on the CCF expenses as they increased year after year. To which it was replied that the money collected and distributed year after year has been correspondingly on the increase too.

But this begs the question: is the CCF the President’s main job? Do we have a President because of the CCF?

Some time ago I bumped into some information that the decision was made that CCF needed to employ people to help it with its money collection, Rather bizarrely, this led to a decision to set up a real television studio to do the rather sporadic promos on behalf of CCF. Even more bizarrely, the people who were chosen were related, or to be more precise, used to be related to people on the President’s staff.

It is such cases that cumulatively have contributed to give the impression that here was what Franco Debono, in other circumstances, used to call ‘the clique’. The clique is on board and it helps those who are insiders.

I fell foul of this clique and if there is anything that defines a clique it is the savage way with which it defends itself. Even perhaps when, or if, it is not at fault.

When I was invited to the state dinner during President Napolitano’s visit, I felt it my duty to do a spot of rather bland journalistic work. I had been told a story and I wanted to check it. Till that point, I had been rather sceptical about it.

I had been told that one evening, Robert, the President’s son, went rather late to San Anton and, being hungry, asked the soldier on guard to give him something to eat.

The guard replied that the serving staff had left (it was about 9.30pm), and had even offered to go out and buy Robert some pastizzi.

The next day, so the story went, the soldier was sent away from San Anton and it seemed he was made to appear as if he had committed some form of lèse majesté.

Anyway, that was the story I heard. Seeing that seated next to me was Robert’s wife, the President’s daughter-in-law and a high PL official (and Darleen’s sister), I asked gently if such an incident had ever happened.

Mrs Abela replied she was certain this had never happened and, at the end of the meal, she got Robert round and he too confirmed he had never been to San Anton that late and had never asked for something to eat.

At that point, I believed the assurances by the Abela couple.

But then, the next day, all hell broke loose. The President himself (again this tendency to reply ‘in prima persona’) took the quite unusual step of calling a press conference (it was a Saturday afternoon and there was an important match during the World Cup) and announced the government was to hold an inquiry because of a suspicion that some people had state documents in their possession which they should not have.

I still do not know if the government at that stage had really accepted to set up an inquiry and had drawn up the terms of reference.

Anyway, the inquiry was duly held – it was a ramshackle affair and predictably led to no conclusion.

As I said, I believed the Abela couple then. But when the President’s son saw fit to speak during a PL mass meeting with such a partisan accent that not even the PL leader, who spoke directly after him, had, I began to see things in a different light. Here was the son of the President, who had been appointed (naively) by a prime minister who felt he was contributing to national unity, badmouthing the man who had appointed his own father.

Then came the State Opening of Parliament and now this Darleen affair. And quite frankly I do not know what or who to believe. It’s either we have the president of all the naives or else some people, once appointed to a high office, begin to think they have become all-mighty.

It is so, so easy, to lose credibility. And a President functions for no other reason than through his credibility. Forget the CCF, that is his real role.

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