Since his appointment in 2019, George Vella had one of the most eventful tenures of any President: the Covid-19 pandemic, the resignation of a Prime Minister prompted by street protests, and an Opposition which threatened to rip itself apart being but some of the things he has had to handle.
“Nobody prepares you with what you need to do,” Vella begins when asked how he handled these matters.
The President was sitting down for an exclusive interview with The Malta Independent on Sunday covering the past four years of his term.
“But without a doubt, when I eventually did accept, I never imagined [it would be like this]. While you’ll find people who say it’s a cushy job and that you are just a figurehead… nobody prepares you for what might happen,” he says.
Vella explains that one must use all the resources acquired throughout their career – and not just in politics – with one aim: “that what you are doing is for the good of the country and its people.” There must be no other consideration, he adds.
Speaking about principles, Vella says that the first principle in the presidency is to become apolitical.
“You don’t have a party. This is something which people reading may think is difficult, but I can assure you that it is an exercise which can be done,” he says.
“Everybody has their party. But at the same time you have to keep before you that you are not looking at anyone’s faces when you take decisions. Friends, not friends, people you know, people you don’t; the decisions you need to take have to be taken in the interest of the common good. Some say that the common good is a cliché, but you do have to look at the good of the nation,” he continues.
He says that perhaps because of his medical background he tends to look at the nation more as a patient, to see what may be wrong and how it may be fixed. “You can’t always fix things, but you do what you can,” he says.
‘I don’t feel like there is the will from the two parties to move forward’- President on constitutional reform
One of the main issues that brought up early on in Vella’s Presidency revolved around constitutional reforms, with this aspect being carried over from his predecessors.
Since then, many ideas have been put out there publicly, but what progress at times has appeared lacking.
Asked about this, Vella says that a lot of the constitutional reforms have in fact been done. He mentions the new way that the President will be chosen, the new way the Ombudsman was chosen, and how the Attorney General’s office split as examples of reforms which emerged from the Commission set up to handle constitutional reforms – though he points out that these were also pushed for by the Venice Commission.
He said that all that had been recommended by the Venice Commission has been implemented, but that he then went a step further and opened the matter up to the public to make their own suggestions – a process which took six months.
The material was then analysed, divided into sections, and packaged for the discussion to continue, but the Covid-19 pandemic then curtailed progress and made it impossible to meet.
“After Covid, I thought we would continue moving. What has happened is that - and I say this with the greatest of responsibility – we are at a point where the material is all ready, where we studied systems from abroad including Ireland’s citizen’s assemblies, but when we came to implement this model and to choose a person to lead it, unfortunately we got stuck as no agreement could be found, like in the case of the Ombudsman,” he explained.
“It pains me to say it, but I don’t feel like there is the will which there was from the two parties to keep moving forward. I don’t know how many meetings I have called to try and implore them to find a common name, but so far this name has not arrived and in the meantime time is continuing to pass by,” he lamented.
President fears he may have to stay on if agreement on his successor isn’t found
Vella’s successor will be the first President to have to be appointed by a cross-party majority. Up until now, any Presidential nominee only needed a simple majority – ergo, the backing of the government – and while in the past effort has always been made for the President to gain unanimous backing from Parliament, as was almost the case for Vella’s appointment (two PD MPs boycotted the vote), there is a lot more riding on this agreement being reached now.
Recent history suggests that it may be more difficult than in the past for an agreement to be reached: Anthony Mifsud remained Ombudsman for 20 months after his term expired because the government and Opposition couldn’t reach an agreement on his replacement, while the government changed the law concerning the appointment of the Standards Commissioner because the two sides failed to reach an agreement on who should succeed George Hyzler.
It is safe to say that Vella is worried that recent history may repeat itself when it comes to choosing his successor, and that he may well have to extend his own term as President because no agreement is reached.
“It’s difficult to say who should follow, but what I say is that I hope that there will be an agreement on a person, so we don’t end up like we did in the matter of the Ombudsman,” he said when asked about the prospect of his replacement needing a cross-party majority.
“As head of state, I hope that there are talks from now so that if there is someone in the minds of who has to appoint my successor in a year, there is time for them to discuss and agree. I don’t want to see this office be blocked due to the lack of agreement on a person,” he said.
“Then what happens? Based on what the law says now the President would have to stay in his position until a successor is chosen, which is something that, I can assure you, I don’t want to go through,” he continued.
He said that the concept of needing a two-thirds majority to be chosen as President is good because it means that one would have more support, but at the same time it can cause problems on reaching an agreement on the ideal person.
President questions: Can Malta cope with more tourists?
The President has, particularly in recent months, spoken a lot about the environment and against wanton development and construction.
Asked whether he believes that the government is doing enough to protect Malta’s environment, Vella said that while he would not directly criticise the executive, he would say that “you can never do enough.”
“We have a country which cannot grow. It is a territory which is what it is and a population which is what it is. We know it is one of the most densely populated countries, and we know that in recent years we have had a labour-intensive economy which meant we needed to import more foreigners to keep the economic wheel turning. My question is – and I’m not an economist – can we keep going with this model?,” he began explaining.
“Some recently spoke about the need to grow the number of tourists. Ok, that’s good if we look at just a number. But you need where to host them, where they enjoy themselves, infrastructure, restaurants. Is our country able to cope with this? I am putting it as a question as I am not capable of answering it as I am not an economist,” he said.
He continued that if we want to keep moving forward, it must mean that the economic return which the country is receiving must not decrease. However, he questioned whether an economic model which can give the same income without taking the same resources away from the country can be found.
“I have nothing against developers. It’s a business which has to be done legitimately, and in line with the rules so we avoid tragedies which happened recently. But how much fields is it going to eat up? Where are we going to get to?,” he said.
“You can say that there are local plans in place, but this is why I made an appeal to the regulatory authorities recently: we cannot just implement the structure plans irrespective of the result, but they need to go to the government and say I am implementing this plan but look at the result,” he continued.
However, he believes that we still on time to save the country, implying that there is too much to lose if the current environmental degradation is allowed to continue.
He noted that besides nature being lost, and the Maltese environment, there is also the tourism aspect to consider.
“What are they going to enjoy? The tourist isn’t going to come to look at concrete and buildings the likes of which he has seen and will continue to see everywhere. If you leave something natural, they will come to see that,” he said.
The President continued by saying that he always mentions Gozo as an example of this, and added, that “trouble is brewing” on Comino as well recently.
“I think we would be idiots if we do not appreciate the intrinsic value of that which is natural,” he said.
Asked whether he thinks that part of this issue is a societal problem as well, that maybe the attitude is that protection of natural environment is not as much of a priority as it should be, Vella said that he thinks that the Maltese intrinsically wants to enjoy open spaces and clean air and wants a good environment.
“But in most cases, you cannot choose where to live, especially when you have a lot of young couples who invest in their homes. So everyone needs where to live, and you have to provide,” he said.
This is besides the fact, he said, that some are building because they believe it is a solid way to invest on the basis that buildings thus far never really lost their value.
“All of this pushes for there to be more development – which many times isn’t actually development, because when things get bigger then it is uglifying the environment,” he said.
He pointed out that the average Maltese person will fight for their right to build up to a number of storeys if they have a plot because they know that they can turn a quick buck on it, but at the same time he himself loves the environment and wants to enjoy clean air, seas, and less traffic.
“But the more the economy grows and gathers stream, the more negative effects there will be,” he said.
He pointed out that one must be open to discussions on matters such as the country’s economic model, saying that economists need to look towards industries which provide higher economic value but take up less space and needs fewer workers to do.
“There is also the point to make: can we keep growing the foreign community? First and foremost, I have great respect for the foreign communities here, and the idea that we should be only Maltese here and not multicultural is a mistaken one. They are part of our society and we have to thank them for their contribution, but at the same time there is a limit,” he said.
“Till where are we going to get? Are we going to fill everywhere with skyscrapers and then not leave a single piece of greenery? Where is our quality of life going to go? These are the questions which we need answer,” he said.
‘I wanted to send a message’: Vella explains IVF Bill controversy for the first time
One of the more controversial matters which the President found himself at the centre of occurred last summer, when Parliament passed a bill which allowed doctors to perform genetic testing on IVF embryos and indefinitely freeze those carrying rare and severe diseases.
The bill went unsigned by Vella for three weeks amidst speculation that he was opposed to the bill. At the time, he only told the media that the bill would be signed and that one day he would give an explanation.
The bill was in fact signed by Acting President Frank Bezzina on the same morning that Vella travelled overseas.
“I wanted to send a message there… a message that I wasn’t one-hundred per cent in agreement with the law,” Vella said when asked about the controversy.
“I didn’t disagree with its aim, but there was a delicate medical and scientific debate which was that you could obtain the same result – maybe not at one-hundred per cent certainty – by doing different tests which would not endanger them embryo,” he said.
It is the first time that the President has directly said that he is not in favour of the law and explained exactly why.
“To me it wasn’t enough of an ethical and moral issue for me to say that I would resign, as on the other hand I was weighing up this against the fact that I would create a constitutional crisis [by resigning],” he continued.
“But I did what I could and said what I could so that we could maybe choose a different way of testing,” he said.
Vella explained that as a doctor he wants that everything possible can be offered to couples so that they can have a healthy baby, “but you then need to weigh up what you are risking by getting that result,” he added.
“That’s the whole story,” he said before adding that it “is not true” that he invented a trip abroad so that he avoids signing the bill himself.
“The visit [to the UK] was planned long before: I had to go meet the then Prince Charles at the Commonwealth Games. The Acting President was ready to sign it as he was well within his legal rights to do so, and I didn’t stop him because I didn’t have the resistance I have for the abortion question like today… that’s another matter,” he said.
He said that as President he cannot command what happens, but he feels like he has the moral obligation to speak out.
“It isn’t something where nothing should have been done. My belief was that, yes, [the alternative test proposed] could be done, those who were afraid can be offered a bit of peace of mind – not a one-hundred per cent certainty like the other means can – but the law as it is now carries with it dangers that the suggestions which we were making on another version do not carry. You are trading one-hundred per cent certainty for having no danger to the embryo. That was the whole story,” he said.
“If there are other cases like this, I don’t feel like I should hold back as I have a moral obligation to show what the road ahead should be,” the President said when asked if he would send a similar message in the future if he felt that he had to.
“But I am not going to impose on a government on what it should do – that’s the executive’s decision,” he said.
‘If it were acceptable then the process would have continued,’ Vella says on abortion law
The IVF law, however, will not be the only controversial one to likely find its way onto the President’s desk.
Proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to allow an abortion to take place "when the termination of a pregnancy results from a medical intervention aimed at protecting the health of a pregnant woman suffering from a medical complication which may put her life at risk or her health in grave jeopardy" have stoked controversy, with some arguing that the wording leaves the door open for abortions to be justified in any circumstance.
The bill hasn’t been debated in Parliament since last December, with the government saying that it was making changes to the proposed law.
President Vella – who has repeatedly said in the past that he is against abortion – was amongst the opponents to the bill, using his Republic Day address while the bill was being debated to appeal for “a solution which duly addresses all the points being raised by the different stakeholders.”
It was a significant and rare moment: the President very rarely – if ever – comments on bills which are being discussed in Parliament.
Asked whether the bill in its current form is acceptable to him, Vella said “if it were acceptable, then the process would have continued.”
“There has been a lot of discussion on it, and this discussion is still on going, and I augur that the points of view of different groups can come together to create a law which does not permit abuses which could lead to an abortion,” he said.
“That one drafts a law to protect the mother giving birth if there is a danger to her life is something which everyone agrees with,” he pointed out.
“The lack of agreement comes from when we open up on certain points. But at the moment, this is being discussed. The Prime Minister said that there was the need for discussion, and I enjoy the fact that the discussion is happening. And he admitted – which is good – that the discussion should have been done before the draft was published,” he said.
“So far the draft is tabled in Parliament, when the government feels it has reached an agreement which is of good will and will be accepted by everyone then it will proceed,” he said.
“One must see the future impact of a law. If we say that we are against abortion then we need to be careful that the law cannot be abused and that we have abortions being done by going through the window rather than the door,” he said.
‘The presidency is a service totally to the people’
Vella has one more year left in his tenure, but wouldn’t be drawn into speculating what his legacy as President would be and what he would be remembered for.
“That’s for the ones after me to decide,” he said, when asked. “For the historians and those who study the presidencies. I cannot tell you myself.”
“I thank God that I had the strength to go through the waves, but to do an assessment of the problems, the issues, what could have been done better – that is the domain of historians.”
On what he would like his legacy to be though, he said that he simply wants to be remembered as a man who gave a lot of his time for the good of the country.
“Mistakes happen, but the worst is if there are bad intentions. The presidency is a service totally to the people. At my age I thank the Lord that He gave me the strength to do it as physically, it’s not easy with the amount of meetings and commitments one has, but also mentally you have to prepare yourself, read up so you give the best image for the country you can when you meet someone, especially when you are abroad or having meetings with foreign exponents,” he said.
On what he plans to do after his term is over, a simple answer: “Leave it in the hands of the Lord.”
“I’ll pray to the Lord to allow me another year as at 81 every year counts. So far I feel well, but the Lord will decide. I can’t even say I’ll enjoy my grandchildren as they’ve grown up – maybe I’ll enjoy my great grandchildren, but we’ll see!”