What is wrong with this country? What is it that makes us keep trying our best to hit the bottom rung of everything? Just when we reach the bottom someone excavates a bit more and we sink deeper.
We have a Doctor of Medicine as our head of state and another as our deputy prime minister. You’d imagine the health side of things would be looked after perfectly. It was to a great extent until Robert Abela decided to ignore all advice from the doctors and opened up this country to turn it into the whore of the Mediterranean.
But what has the president got to do with all this? Shouldn’t he be above all decisions on a political level? To a certain extent yes but when it comes to organising a big event under his patronage, he is totally responsible. Especially when it is for charity: right now, the best thing to be charitable is to make sure big events are avoided. And to minimise special occasions where people get into a crowd.
I apologise if I offend a few purists. I find that the idea that a president, because of his or her position, should be above criticism, is the apex of dumbness. Everyone should be subject to scrutiny and criticism. If the highest person of the land takes a dumb decision, I’ll scream about it.
Dr George Vella decided to carry on with his plans to hold a ball under the August full moon where the stars go out to shine and be seen with the shiniest of the land. There was not a hint of social distancing.
Yet that was not the peak of horror.
That came a few days later. The president was asked by a reporter whether, in his humble opinion, holding the ball was the right decision. The president walked on like a bulldozer through weeds, totally disregarding said reporter.
This is the way our head of state sets examples. Treating the media like pests to be tolerated or, if it suits him, disregarded.
If there is one man who should lead by example it is the president. Organising balls, collecting funds, acting wise and collected, then being on the side of what is wrong and reprehensible is definitely not on.
Walking on when asked a question is disrespectful and smacks of arrogance.
This president will go down in history as one of the worst stooges of a government which has so much to answer for with regard to its constant attack on democracy and transparency.
George Vella’s history hardly makes him a star in the democratic firmament. He was close to, and part of, Labour in its worst days. He defended, voted in favour of and kept Joseph Muscat and his band of crooks in power when he was an MP and a minister. He might give the impression he is a ‘good’ man – which maybe, in private, he is – but in politics he has never tried doing anything which makes his democratic credentials shine.
As president he had the opportunity to shine a few times but never did. He did not fire Joseph Muscat in Malta’s darkest hour. He sought advice from, as always, an unidentified expert. He followed it, even when it merited being ignored. As a result, Malta remained under Joseph Muscat for a few more months of tyranny by the Muscat gang.
Shouldn’t George Vella have spared us a total breakdown of the vestige of democracy which had survived under Joseph Muscat?
George Vella had another chance to shine when he should have nominated a new leader of the opposition. But he didn’t. And again he quoted the as yet unidentified expert in constitutionality.
Just as in the December debacle, the leading constitutional experts of the land were in total disagreement with the president. These experts, whose names we knew, all agreed that the president was duty bound to nominate a new leader of the opposition. All except the president’s secret adviser.
In between all this, the president refused to issue Joseph Muscat’s letter of resignation as prime minister. Why the secrecy? Why the obfuscation of all things normal in a normal state? What is the mystery?
The president’s office deserves wholehearted respect. But the office is vested in the person. If by his actions and by his arrogance, the president gives examples of undemocratic ways, then he loses all claim to respect.
The president’s ways with the media, except when they are fawning over him, are the culmination of a man who has always been a sower of discord and a facilitator for Joseph Muscat’s, and now Robert Abela’s, regime.
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