Hardly a day goes by when I am not bombarded by images of the President looking all solemn and stately, and by news of her various historic meetings with people of power and substance.
The assault has been particularly intense since January or so, and I think I know why. The President, you see, is in much-needed image rehab. For all the good intentions, the L-Istrina television bacchanal was a PR disaster. The image of the Head of State and Edgar Preca stumbling about a hysterical mass of sweaty people to Ħadd ma’ jista’ għalina was the undignified pits. It made her look like something out of a Hogarth print, Gin Lane more specifically.
Still, nothing could have prepared me for the latest instalment. Last week the President met a bunch of people who call themselves the Unborn Child Movement. Not that they have anything to do with foetal kicks. Rather, they told Her straight-faced Excellency that they planned to make Malta a ‘Mediterranean centre for womb ecology’.
Peter Serracino Inglott once wrote a divertissement on the ‘fat ladies’ of the prehistoric imagery of Malta. His drift was that they had nothing to do with an insular hip fetish. Instead, they portrayed women as containers – as life-support machines for wombs, essentially.
Five thousand years are as nothing to the folks at the Unborn Child Movement. They haven’t given up on making Malta the navel of the womb. Their plans appeared to be shared by the High Priestess, who thanked them for their work and endorsed their ideas. She then walked with them to the main temple of Valletta where the High Priest celebrated Mass.
There is nothing the matter with thinking that the killing of zygotes and foetuses is murder – people are entitled to their opinions. This, however, is different. The Unborn Child Movement’s fixation with wombs, and their apparent disregard of the fact that wombs generally come attached to conscious life-forms known as ‘women’, is outrageous.
I hope the President realises that this kind of womb fetish tends to be the preserve of far-right Christian gun nuts who live deep in the Bible Belt. Certainly it is not the language of sane and democratically-informed pro-lifers.
The facts that the womb ecologists packed St John’s, and that they were cheered by people and legions of Scouts on their way there, only makes the hysteria (pardon the pun) more audacious. It also shows that the President hasn’t really moved on from the Ħadd ma’ jista’ għalina circus.
Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca has managed to keep mum on a major accident that concerned her office directly
There’s another thing. It involves a certain uncontrolled movement outside the womb that left several people seriously injured. On that one, the President seems to have no time for endorsements and walkabouts. Strange, considering it had directly to do with an organisation she heads.
There was nothing remotely funny about the Paqpaqli disaster. Except, that is, for the main conclusion of the magisterial inquiry. If the Justice Minister’s rendition is accurate, the villain of the story was the driver of the car, Paul Bailey. Among his other sins, Bailey drove the car at excessive speed. The President, on the other hand, has absolutely nothing to answer for.
That alleged conclusion immediately struck me as outrageously absurd and deceitful. First, the ‘excessive speed’ argument is a non-starter, simply because the display of speed is the reason why people go to car shows in the first place. No one would pay money to watch me chug along in a sensible car at a sensible speed.
Second, it is quite obvious that the crash was down to driver error. Albeit a clever car, the Porsche 918 doesn’t have a mind of its own. Nor do runways normally change shape at will.
Bailey it is, then. Which is wonderful news, because he happens to be both an Englishman (a barrani, very conveniently) and a millionaire. In some media reports he actually picked up a few thousand million on the way to become a billionaire, which I suppose makes him even more hateable.
I cannot heap enough scorn on this fuzzy logic. The point is that while driver error might explain why the car crashed, it doesn’t at all explain the consequences of that crash. Which is where the organisers of the event come in – and with them the President.
The event was organised by the Malta Community Chest Fund. The MMCF is chaired by the President and housed at San Anton Palace. Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca is no absentee landlord. On the contrary, she is known to keep a tight hold on the MCCF and on the events it puts up. Last week this newspaper revealed it had seen copies of e-mails which showed that the President was fully involved in the organisation of Paqpaqli.
I am not saying that the President was responsible for what happened. Nor, however, am I saying that she wasn’t. That’s because, to date, the results of the inquiry have not been published. It seems to me that the President is duty-bound to urge the minister to publish it, for her own as well as the public good.
The reason why the Community Chest Fund enjoys such a high profile, and collects so much money, is trust. It’s a kind of informal contract in which people trust the Head of State to use their donations wisely. That’s why the inquiry should be published. It is wrong to expect trust and give none in return.
Coleiro Preca is a major disappointment. In a few weeks she has managed to slum it out on national television, endorse a bunch of womb-fixated creeps, and keep mum on a major accident that concerned her office directly.
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