President George Vella travels to Birmingham on Wednesday, paving the way for his stand-in, Acting President Frank Bezzina, to finally sign a bill reforming IVF treatment into law.
Bezzina is expected to sign the bill this week, before Vella flies back from London on Sunday.
The president will be visiting cancer patients in the UK.
The new law, which allows doctors to perform genetic testing on IVF embryos and indefinitely freeze those carrying rare and severe diseases, was approved by parliament on July 6, gaining support from both parties, with 66 votes in favour and three against.
Several sources have since confirmed that the president is against genetic testing and is uncomfortable signing the law but Vella himself repeatedly refused to clarify his position and his office has completely shunned questions.
Though very cryptic, in his answers to reporters, he made it quite clear that he will not sign the law himself and that he did all he could within his power to influence MPs in the right direction while they were debating the law in parliament last month.
The constitution (article 72) obliges the president to sign laws “without delay” once they are passed on to him from parliament. However, if the law is signed this week, Vella will have delayed his constitutional duty by more than three weeks since the law was approved in parliament.
Last week, ADPD chair Carmel Cacopardo insisted Vella should be impeached for failing to sign the law and that, had a Green electoral candidate been elected to parliament, they would have already presented a motion for his impeachment.
Meanwhile, an announcement that the reform had been signed was published in the latest online issue of The Malta Government Gazette on July 12. The announcement, however, was removed from the digital edition soon after, with the Department of Information saying it was an error that had been rectified.
Until the law is signed, it cannot start being implemented.
A key task for acting president Bezzina
Bezzina, the university pro-rector, was appointed by the government as acting president last month, in what was seen as a move to ensure the president’s office would sign off on the law if Vella was reluctant to do so.
In an interview with Andrew Azzopardi earlier this month, Vella said he had nothing to do with Bezzina’s appointment and that he learned about it after he was appointed.
Bezzina took over from Dolores Cristina who held the position for nine-and-a-half years.
The acting president takes on all the president’s duties whenever the president is abroad or unable to run his office due to health problems.
The acting president has no fixed term, takes an oath of office each time the president is out of the country or in hospital and has the power to fulfil all of the president’s duties, including attending official ceremonies and sign laws.
The constitution allows for the parliamentary speaker to take over the presidential duties if the acting president is not available to step in the role.
The IVF reform was Labour’s flagship proposal during the election campaign, with Prime Minister Robert Abela promising to deliver it within 100 days of being returned to office.
The Church and, at least, a dozen other organisations opposed the law, arguing it violates the human rights of the unborn.
The Nationalist Party initially also opposed genetic testing but later argued that prospective parents should have a choice. It voted in favour of the law after it proposed an amendment to give more importance to a less detrimental form of testing, which the government took on.
However, Nationalist MPs Adrian Delia, Alex Borg and Ivan Bartolo still voted against the reform, which had made conservative members of the opposition uncomfortable.