Star comment: “I am sick and tired of having my intelligence insulted by these ill-bred hamalli who have no sense of propriety and tact.”
A comment sent in by A beneath my post about ‘Merilwees’ Coleiro’s six-hour ceremonials:
My problem with the Abela presidency and the soon-to-be Coleiro Preca presidency is that they seem to think the role is theirs to modify and adapt as they please.
The Constitution clearly defines what the role of the President is and how this should be executed. Abela and Coleiro Preca seems to ignore this completely. This disregard of protocol just unmasks the ignorance of the office holders.
The Presidency has always been relevant – despite what Muscat may suggest. His complete disregard for protocol clouds his judgment. His understanding of the Constitution is frightening.
The six-hour long ceremony is tacky and naff and deeply insulting. If the President-Elect wanted to thank her constituents, she should have done so on another day – in a separate non-official event.
In this case, the line between party politics and the office of head of state will be blurred.
Her “displays of national unity” seem fascist and insincere.
Her decision to have her inauguration mass “among the most vulnerable” is very condescending and patronising. It is a shame that the carers and staff at the Dar tal-Providenza didn’t point this out to her.
With regards to the latter comment, I am speaking as a person who had a close relative who was disabled. It is insulting to have vulnerable people take part in some kind of freak show for Laburisti to boost her own ego.
I am sick and tired of having my intelligence insulted by these ill-bred hamalli who have no sense of propriety and tact.
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Amen.
The ceremony is nothing but the shape of things to come. Muscat calls it the second republic.
Which one he’ll be its Borg Olivier, Mintoff and Mamo.
Expect a long drawn build up to extensive presidential powers, immunity and perpetuative terms. Aliyev style.
Marie Louise Coleiro nothing but the guinea pig.
Six-hour long ceremony – this is a presidency, not a coronation, FFS.
Also, talk about milking the presidency for all it’s worth.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140322/local/Mother-s-pride.511629
Never heard your opinion on this, Daphne.
[Daphne – My opinion is this: isn’t Pope Francis lucky, to meet all the top Maltese Laburisti and their infants in the space of just a few months? But more to the point, why do people who go on about being progressive and liberal make it their life’s ambition to meet the Pope – or, as in the case of that horrid little weasel JPO, to have his girlfriend, now his wife who he has cheated on, invited to the Pope’s mass? It’s because, to them, the Pope is a celebrity not the head of the Roman Catholic Church, and they feel important meeting him.]
As a citizen of Malta who believes in a secular State, I strongly object to the so-called “tradition” whereby the President of Malta makes it a point (a) to visit the Pope as his first “state visit” or “official visit” and to (b) visit the Pope as his/her last official visit.
To me this smacks of medieval feudalism and I cannot think of any other country where such a “tradition” exists.
The first visit is reminiscent of the anointing of medieval kings by the Pope and the last of a sort of by-your-leave from the Pope to end one’s office. To me, this is subservience to the Holy See and unbecoming to a modern State.
I make it clear that I have no problem with state visits to the Holy See in the normal course of diplomacy but what I object to is the precise symbolic timing which to me stands for obeisance to a foreign State and a particular religion.
President Abela has followed this practice started, if I am not mistaken, sometime in the 1990s.
It remains to be seen whether the new President will continue this “tradition”, if a State born just fifty years ago can really have “traditions”.
Totalitarian leaders always proceeded to disguise their gradual rise to power as some benevolent dissolution of all civil instruments and constitutional checks and balances. This accompanied by a parallel obfuscation of all that exists outside state insititutions.
This reshuffle has removed anyone older and with far greater localised influence than Muscat, the inner circle exclusively his. Zammit Lewis, Mizzi, Bonnici belong to him.
We won’t have to actively participate in anything, we’ll be taken care of, anything else a spanner in the works.
The Queen’s coronation, a ceremony that hasn’t changed much in some 900 years, was about three hours duration. This ‘commoner’ is going for six hours.
Labour presidents seem to want to outshine their predecessors.
I was yearning for Fenech Adami’s or Ugo Mifsud Bonnici’s normality but have to put up with Coleiro Preca trying to outshine Gorg Abela and Pope Bergoglio in one fell swoop.
One of the issues that we seem to be missing is Jo’s sudden talk of having a second republic.
Is this some kind of excuse to give this arrogant upstart more power, or to feed his narcissistic vanity?
Hear, hear.
We’ve all, well some of us, have been thinking along these exact same lines. Here it has been summarized accurately and succinctly.
And what about il-Guy? Muscat is treating the European Commissioner role like a presidency. Putting the aging, corrupt Labour old boy out to pasture, so to speak.
Hear, hear. Very well said. I cringe at the thought of the President elect representing our nation in international circles where protocol counts.
If you boycott all these events and ignore the local media, it makes life much more pleasurable.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-04-01/news/coleiro-preca-presidency-to-facilitate-debate-on-social-issues-4464377856/
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-04-01/news/president-to-act-as-consultant-to-social-policy-minister-farrugia-4461690880/
So, the Presidency is now being reduced to an extension of the individual’s previous portfolio if s/he was a Minister and/or become the next Madre Theresa of Calcutta. Not that the latter isn’t a nice gesture and all, but that’s not the President’s job; the above post clearly shows why it should remain so.