By the time the year which has just started comes to an end, the political parties will be gearing up for the European Parliament elections, to be held in May 2024, and Malta will be looking for a new President, as George Vella’s term will expire in April of the same year.

This is unless, of course, developments during the course of 2022 will lead to an early departure of Vella from San Anton Palace.

Parliament will be resuming its sittings tomorrow and one of the main items before the House of Representatives in the comings weeks will be the continuation of the debate on what has come to be known as the abortion bill, a label which the government refuses, but which it cannot eradicate from public parlance.

This is because, on the whole, the way the government has worded the clause which is to amend the law will lead to the introduction of abortion, irrespective of what the government is saying in defence.

President Vella is not happy with it, but has so far stopped short of saying that he will resign if the government persists with its current proposal. “Everyone knows my position,” is what the Head of State has repeatedly said when confronted with the question as to what he will do when the time comes.

But it seems that the President has learnt from the criticism that was directed at him last year.

Last summer, Parliament adopted a law which opened the way to embryo testing, enabling the identification of certain conditions before the embryo is implanted in the womb. It was clear that Vella was against the law. What happened was that Vella went abroad, and the Bill was signed by Acting President Frank Bezzina. Vella, each time he had been asked, responded by saying that the “law will be signed”, but it was not him who did it. In this respect, Vella lost much respect and credibility.

It was recently reported – and not denied – that the President is now ready to cancel any trips abroad if his plans coincide with the parliamentary vote on the abortion amendment. One of his programmed trips is a three-week visit to Australia.

If Vella remains unhappy with the law and he proceeds with his reported intentions to remain in Malta when Parliament approves the Bill, we could be heading towards what would be an unprecedented resignation of a President of the Republic.

But so much still needs to happen until we arrive at that point, and so much could still change.

In the past days, we had Health Minister Chris Fearne explaining that the government intends to amend its proposal to make it clear – his words – that any viable pregnancy must be seen through, with the baby being born.  

But this has not placated pro-life groups, who interpreted Fearne’s words as meaning that abortion will be allowed up to 24 weeks after conception. The government, they insisted, wants to legalise abortion although it has no electoral mandate to do so. They also described the government’s move as wanting Malta to have “a more extreme abortion law than most EU countries”.

The government says that it listens, but apparently it has not listened enough. For one thing, the pro-life groups opposing the law have said that they are still waiting to be given an appointment to discuss the matter with the Prime Minister. Why is Robert Abela so reluctant to hear what they have to say?

One other significant matter that will be debated in Parliament in the early stages of the New Year is the amendment the government is proposing on the way the Standards Commissioner is appointed. It’s been described as an anti-deadlock mechanism, but deep down what it means is that the government will be appointing whoever it deems fit even when the Opposition does not agree. The three names that the Nationalist Party has reportedly suggested have not been accepted.

In this case, the bar has been set very high, as the first Standards Commissioner we had – George Hyzler – performed his duties in an outstanding way and, most importantly, without fear or favour. Given that the commissioner will be mostly overseeing and ruling on the behaviour of government officials, the new appointee must closely follow in Hyzler’s footsteps.

What the House should be debating is how to give the Standards Commissioner, whoever he or she will be, more power than the law currently affords. There have been too many instances when Hyzler’s work went down the drain because, ultimately, any action that could be taken lies in the hands of a committee made up of the Speaker and four MPs. The committee, as has been widely proposed, should be made up of people who are independent of the House of Representatives.