By the end of next week, Malta will have a new President. Current Minister for Family Affairs and Social Solidarity, Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, will become the ninth President of the Republic of Malta. She will succeed Dr George Abela whose term of office comes to an end on Thursday.

First things first. Undoubtedly, Dr Abela has been a very good president. He has not only delivered what he was expected to deliver but I dare say even more than that. His role remained distinct from other executive functions and he did his utmost to achieve the maximum with what he had. True, from time the time President Abela did express his views that the responsibilities of the role should be widened. But it stopped at that.

I am also sure that Marie Louise Coleiro Preca will succeed in the role she has been assigned. Her involvement in politics since the age of 16 shows that she is hard-working and an achiever. I wish her good luck. I know, in fact everyone knows, that had it been up to her, she would have kept her present role. But the Prime Minister had other plans. It is obvious that in order to make her change her mind and accept the role, he promised her a few things. What’s worrying is that he seems to have promised her something that should have been out-of-bounds for him: a ministerial kind of presidency. From what we have been told, the new President will be responsible for a number of areas that so far have been the remit of the ministry for social policy. By allowing this to happen, the Prime Minister is not doing any favours to the outgoing minister but is, I am afraid, putting her in a very dangerous situation.

First of all, by retaining certain areas that may attract political controversy, the new president risks losing the respect of the widest spectrum of the population possible. She certainly does not deserve this but neither does the presidency. The presidency does not belong to anyone in particular but to the whole population. This role should have remained intact. Although many may think it is only a ceremonial role, successive presidents have shown that the presidency can be a unifying factor in an otherwise divided population. By assuming responsibility for areas which may be open to scrutiny by the political forces and the people themselves, the President risks being lumped with baggage that may harm the presidency for many years.

By unilaterally re-shaping the presidency to accommodate his strategic and electoral needs, Dr Muscat is sending the wrong message to all, in particular to us, the Opposition. He is telling us very clearly that his majority in Parliament is so big that he just steamrolls over everything and everyone. Perhaps he is thinking that a nine-seat majority is also equivalent to two-thirds of the House, which is what he needs in order to amend the Constitution and to give birth what he termed the second republic. If this is the mentality he will be retaining for the rest of this legislature then he cannot expect the Opposition to play ball when matters that need our full support are discussed and decided on. Maybe on many matters he will be free to proceed as he pleases but there are things he cannot change unless he wishes to ignore the Constitution. Messing around with the presidency is risky. Too risky. It’s not too late to re-think what he bound himself too. For the sake of the hard-working Coleiro Preca. For the sake of Malta.

Charlo’ Bonnici is Opposition spokesperson for Sustainable Development, the Environment and Climate Change