The Spiteri Debono presidency is off to a rocky start.

As Myriam Spiteri Debono was being appointed President of the Republic with a Mass at St John’s and a walkabout to the Palace of the Grandmasters where she took the oath of office, other voices were expressing disagreement.

Appearing on TVM along with her predecessor as the Maltese member of the European Commission Karmenu Vella, Commissioner Helena Dalli did not mince words.

Obviously she could not attack the Government side of the House which had voted unanimously in favour of Ms Spiteri Debono. Instead, Dalli complained that it was “unfair” that the Nationalist Party had excluded people linked to the Joseph Muscat administration from being nominated as president.

The Nationalist Opposition had voted unanimously in favour of Spiteri Debono along with the government majority.

Dalli herself had been mentioned as a possible president but the Nationalist Party had insisted in the consultation that took place because of the new requirement that a two-thirds majority is needed to appoint a new president that no one who had office under Joseph Muscat would get the PN support in view of the conclusion by the public inquiry that the State had to bear responsibility for the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Dalli had been a member of Muscat’s Cabinets from 2013 to 2019 when she was nominated as European Commissioner for Equality. This was the only portfolio without a directorate-general in the Von der Leyen Commission.

Dalli was thus minister in Malta when Daphne was killed in 2017. On Thursday Dalli insisted that it was unfair for the PN to portray the ministers at that time as having “blood on their hands”. This was the same conclusion as reached by the public inquiry, even if such strong language was not used.

She and Karmenu Vella who had preceded her as European Commissioner reminded listeners they had not been opposed by the Nationalist Party when they were nominated as Commissioners.

Both said that Spiteri Debono is respected by all and that this respect was well earned over the years.

The reactions to this outburst were as predictable as could be expected. PN MEP David Casa wrote on Facebook that he was not impressed by what Dalli said. “What is unfair is that the people are being robbed by those with financial greed,” he wrote. These were the same words used by the new president in her inaugural address when she decried the increased preponderance of greed in today’s Malta.

On Facebook and on the social media the reactions were fast and furious. Dalli’s ambition to become president had been rendered more patent by her outburst.

Over the years the ambition to hold the highest office of the land had cost many people to lose what respect the people had for them.

Like the British governors who came before them the halls of the palace can tell many a story. It was said that one spouse of one such candidate even went to measure the curtains at San Anton intending naturally to replace them. Her man was not chosen. This was in PN’s time. Such stories exposed the ones with such patent ambition to public ridicule.

After all, the theme of these days should not be Dalli and her anger but rather the new president and her words and the wide acceptance of them by the people out on the streets.

As the country heads into the final stretch of the European Parliament election with all surveys predicting more or less another Labour victory despite a public debt rising year after year and with government acting fast to nip in the bud any public dissatisfaction such as the status of the Maltese language in the new national airline, we can look forward to more exciting days ahead.

 

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