The Republic Problem

What is the State? The answer can be borrowed from a verse of the Creed: “all that is, seen and unseen”.

The State itself is never seen; what we see are its symbols and the exercise of its powers. The State is very much like God. You can see symbols reminding you of God and you can see the exercise of God’s power, but you can never see God Himself. That is how the State works: you can see its flags, its coats-of-arms, its currency, and you can see the implementation and enforcement of its laws, but you can never see the State. You do not really know that the State exists; you believe that it exists because you see its symbols and its effects.

There is a huge difference between the Government and the State. The Government is only one channel the State uses to exercise its powers. Another channel would be the Courts of Law, say. The State is larger than the Government.

In the system we have inherited from our former colonial masters – the constitutional monarchy – the Monarch does not have absolute powers to do whatever s/he likes, but at the same time s/he is the ultimate symbol of the State. The Monarch is the living symbol of the State.

The British monarch is shrouded in a god-like aura, a sort of semi-divinity. Even if the monarch were not the head of the Church of England, British monarchy would still be based on theological grounds, and the Monarch considered as God’s representative on Earth. Whether one is a believer or, paradoxically, atheist or agnostic, one still wittingly or unwittingly accepts the dominant ideology that the British monarch is a divine being, or, at least, somebody who reigns by divine right. It would seem that the notion of divinity can exist even in the absence of a belief in God.

This almost-divine quality infuses the Monarch with extraordinary moral authority while providing the nation with a unifying figure transcending the divisiveness and pettiness of party politics and politickeering.

I use these theologically sounding terms for a specific reason. The British monarch is constitutionally bound to silence and neutrality. But that does not prevent the unconscious psychological phenomenon whereby the person of the monarch is invested with a sort of “holiness”. The Monarch is the head of a national hierarchy, and the word “hierarchy” ultimately comes from the Ancient Greek words hieros (meaning “holy”) and arkho (meaning “rule”).

This “holiness” or semi-divinity creates a sense of “shame” or “taboo” in the Monarch’s subjects, and to my mind has a positive effect in imposing on the subjects a sense of probity, be it fleeting or lasting.

This is where we face our Republic Problem.

Despite the moral characteristics of the individuals occupying the office of President of Malta, the office itself lacks the same almost-divine quality of the British crown. Not because Malta is tiny and her history as an independent nation young, but because the President of a Republic is not above politics, and remains willy-nilly part and parcel of politics.

Thus, the Office of President – irrespective of the personal qualities of the office-holder – lacks the institutional wherewithal to allow the officeholder to instil a sense of “shame” leading to an inner search for principles and action which prefer right to wrong.

I am not advocating a return to the pre-1974 arrangement. Retaining the British monarch as Head of State of Malta is out of the question. Last year, Australian historian Jenny Hocking revealed that in 1975 the Queen intervened to topple the thenPrime Minister of Australia, Gough Whitlam.

Instead, I am addressing the need, expressed time and again in online comments for instance, for a guarantor of the Constitution. This would go beyond the role of the Constitutional Court, as I think people want a political guarantor, who, unlike the institutionally shackled Court, would act quickly and discreetly.

The danger of absolute majoritarianism

Not only is Malta bereft of any institutional setup allow- ing the President to serve as a super-partes moral compass, but it is also running the risk of “Absolute Majoritarianism”.

The concept was recently expressed in apt fashion by PN Deputy Leader Robert Arrigo who rightly observed that Dr Muscat’s getting away with a lot could lead to what I’m terming “Absolute Majoritarianism”. Meaning that if things keep following their current course, Dr Muscat might end up mustering enough support in Parliament to overturn the Constitution without the need of the Opposition’s consent. He would have rendered impotent the two-thirds-majority rule.

This is highly dangerous, as the government side could easily extend the lifetime of a legislature, say, or alter some basic yet controversial aspect of the constitutional document.

Mr Arrigo’s observation complements the guarantor of the constitution argument. Mr Arrigo’s reasoning is that democracy needs not only legal, institutional and cultural guarantees. It also needs the people’s effort.

Democracy is dependent on constitutional “life support equipment”, otherwise it dies. Democracy is not the natural state of affairs; tyranny is. Indeed, democracy is an effort – to obtain respect for the rights of the individual and for minorities, and to contain arbitrariness and abuse by those who govern. Tyranny is easy as the powerful impose their plans, ideology, or whims.

When the people weaken the Opposition, they remove one of the most effective safeguards against government abuse, sounding the death knell for democracy. The damage done by an overconfident government can take years, even generations, to undo.

My personal library (6)

Antonella Cesarini’s Una rivoluzione in forma di legge. Malta 1974: storia di una anomala revisione costituzionale ( A revolution in the form of a law. Malta 1974: the history of an anomalous constitutional revision, 1997) is an interesting long essay which attempts to describe and analyse the “anomalous” constitutional amendments of 1974. Oddly enough, I cannot seem to find any review of the book published at the time of its publication. It is a pity, as it would have been instructive to read in retrospect what Maltese reviewers would have made of it 20 years ago, also because the Italians have a knack for making explicit all that the English keep implicit. All in all, it is a book worth reading and cherishing in one’s library as it lends more insight to the on-and-off debate on constitutional development. I think it should be read together with Ugo Mifsud Bonnici’s succinct but illuminating Kif Sirna Repubblika (1999).