Some people commenting on the internet became almost hysterical when Immanuel Mifsud, the novelist, wrote a blog-post in which he expressed his dismay and irritation at the way in which the President and her husband demean their positions through their behaviour. But he’s right. This has been the case since the outset, with that embarrassing, ridiculous and costly day-long pantomime the President put on to mark her appointment. But the spectacle at the end of the Boxing Day fundraiser for the Community Chest Fund really made sensible people cringe more than ever.
Marie Louise Coleiro is no longer Marie Louise Coleiro but the head of state. And you do not touch the head of state except when you are required to shake his or her hand. This is basic rule number one: no touching. You may touch the Maltese head of state no more than you may touch the British head of state, yet while nobody would dream of jumping on Queen Elizabeth II, joshing her or hugging her or bumping her around on stage, clearly some people think it is quite all right to do that with the Maltese president. The scenes on stage at the fundraiser were painful to watch, as a bunch of people swamped the head of state and jumped around with her, starting from her daft husband who clearly does not know any better.
Immanuel Mifsud correctly apportioned the blame to all parties: to the President who should make it clear through forbidding body language that touching her is not appropriate, and to the people who press her flesh because they don’t know that they must never do that. Maybe it’s because the President has a typical, homely figure and appearance that we see in her the archetype of the Maltese mama, he suggested. I disagree with that. Quite apart from the fact that none of the women I know who are mothers and in their 50s look like that, and the other fact that most of those jumping on and around her were not necessarily young enough to be her children – and that includes her husband – this behaviour goes on because, far from forbidding it, she actively encourages it. Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, quite simply, sees absolutely no need to distinguish between her personal identity and persona and the position she occupies as head of state. This tendency of prime ministers to use important official positions as the convenient means to rid themselves of inconvenient members of parliament, thereby demeaning and even wrecking the position, has got to stop.
Immanuel Mifsud compared the scene on stage, with the President, her husband and their crowd of fundraisers, all jumping up and down, cheering, shouting and hugging each other in a sea of balloons, to a celebration in the village square when a favourite team has won a football match. But the nadir was reached when somebody handed a microphone to the President’s husband and asked him to “dedicate a song” to the head of state. The President’s husband looks like a bit of a nerd who got swallowed up whole by a bossy and domineering woman with a lifelong career in party politics, but it turns out that he can hold his own in the vulgarity stakes. “Last year I should have dedicated All Night Long to her instead of Not Tonight Josephine” – Is that even a song? And is “her” a reference to the cat’s mother? – “because she kept me awake all night long that time,” he said.
That would be far too much information for anyone, even if Edgar Preca were Russell Brand and living with a Paris catwalk model. But for somebody in his early 60s, married to a stout matron in her late 50s, both of them far from attractive or glamorous, the visual imagery is appalling. And that is before we have even gone into the subject of whether the spouse of the head of state should be making sexual remarks about his bedroom activities with the head of state, on a public stage.
Mr Preca then made matters a hundred times worse by “dedicating” You’re The Most Beautiful Girl in the World to the President, thereby ensuring that even fewer people take her seriously and the role of President is demeaned even further.
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