Imagine for a minute Queen Elizabeth waking up in the morning and peering through her Buckingham Palace bedroom window. Imagine her seeing Boris Johnson dangling from a zipline inaugurating the building of a high-rise block which would spoil the view of Hyde Park.

Can you imagine her, grabbing her handbag and a wooden box and stomping off to Hyde Park Corner to stand on the box and tell us what she thinks about the new building plans? All right, maybe not Hyde Park Corner – it is a bit passé now – but can you imagine the queen furiously typing her thoughts in a Facebook post?

Not really. And there’s a reason for that: when heads of state talk, they’re talking for the whole nation. There’s no such thing as speaking in their own personal capacity.

Perhaps Malta President George Vella forgot this for a minute last weekend, when he took to Facebook to lambast an application for a five-storey apartment block in the street where he has his private residence in Żejtun, saying that his town “deserves better”.

He forgot that there is no such distinction between George Vella the Żejtun doctor and George Vella the president of Malta. A president of the republic is always a president whatever he does.

He was subsequently taken aback by the backlash to his Facebook post. People were indignant that he spoke out on something specifically happening in his backyard, when practically every street in Malta is witnessing a similar fate to the one of Triq San Girgor, in Żejtun.

Consequently, the president went on a defensive PR campaign to convince us all that he’s an environmentalist at heart and even published links to all his presidential speeches where he made reference to the abysmal state of planning in Malta.

What the president is failing to understand is that there’s a difference between deeds and words. Referring to topics in speeches is not the same as pointedly coming out against specific projects which are of detriment to the common good. A general reference to the uglification of Malta in a speech is mere words; an outright condemnation of a project is a deed. This was the first time that he’s done a tangible deed and it failed to be symbolical because it happened to touch a raw nerve in his very backyard. Vella is not the president of Żejtun, but president of the whole of Malta, so if he’s going to complain about a high rise in his own street, he’s also got to speak against every other planning decision making people’s life miserable.

For example, why did he not add his voice to those afflicted citizens who, thanks to Ian Borg, are now living in a roundabout in Attard or those farmers whose land has been turned to asphalt?

Moreover, Vella has to keep in mind that he did not become a president out of nowhere. He’s been an MP for almost half a century and a cabinet minister from 2013 till his presidential appointment in 2019 – the very years when there was a blighty spike in the uglification of Malta. This was the direct result of Joseph Muscat’s corrupt decision to start selling Maltese passports. That brought along with it a building frenzy – people scrambling to build and rent out their properties to phantom crook citizens.

Did President Vella ever publicly speak out against this?

Mr President, all you have to do is go to Bidnija and pay your respects to a journalist killed because she was unearthing rot on members of the government cabinet you formed part of- Kristina Chetcuti

Or did he ever say anything about the ITS public land which his government sold for a pittance to DB to be turned into Dallas and Dynasty blocks of concrete? Did he ever say anything about the horrid Mrieħel towers which spoil the view even from Mdina?

Another thing. As president of the republic, he is duty bound to dig deep. The problem is not just that the “existing planning policies were inadequate”. The root of the problem is that the president’s former mentoree, Muscat, behaved liked the genie of the lamp and promised everything to everyone, fanning an instant gratification culture which nurtures a society unable to think long term.

The uglification of Malta is the result of an uncivilised society living by the law of the jungle. That is what the president must tackle because the whole of Malta “deserves better”.

In his media statement, Vella also expressed shock that the criticism aimed towards him last weekend was “laced with insults accusations, innuendos and outright name calling”.

Does he watch Super One? Has President Vella ever thought what it was like for the assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia? She was not insulted over a weekend – she was blitzed with “accusations and innuendos and outright name calling” for decades at a stretch. And the dehumanisation attack was orchestrated by the Labour Party – the president’s very own party.

In case the president is not aware, this still goes on. Just look at the vitriol attack going on right now against Roberta Metsola and David Casa. It’s nothing short of incitement of violence. A president’s role is not to be shocked that people are attacking him but to be shocked that his own citizens fulfilling their duty are. 

I’ve said this and I’ll keep saying it for as long as it takes: President Vella can reverse the uglification of the soul of the nation with one simple symbolic act to show that he does not want to partake in any of the decay and decadence.

Mr President, all you have to do is go to Bidnija and pay your respects to a journalist killed because she was unearthing rot on members of the government cabinet you formed part of.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
twitter: @krischetcuti