Myriam Spiteri Debono first in line to become next president
Former speaker had called for redemption after Daphne’s murder
Former speaker Myriam Spiteri Debono is the frontrunner to become the next President of the Republic, sources have told Times of Malta.
A notary by profession, Spiteri Debono was a Labour activist and electoral candidate in the 1980s and 1990s and served as the first woman speaker of parliament from 1996 to 1998 during Alfred Sant’s tenure.
She also served as president of Labour’s women section and is widely known as a moderate with socialist beliefs.
Sources said Prime Minister Robert Abela proposed her name to Bernard Grech on Wednesday, with the opposition leader indicating he would have no objection to the nominee, despite her Labour background.
Grech is expected to convene the PN parliamentary group shortly to obtain their approval.
Should the group give the green light, Spiteri Debono will assume the role of Malta’s 11th President of the Republic on April 4, succeeding George Vella.
Contacted yesterday morning, Spiteri Debono said: “Everybody, me included, should wait for the official announcement. And whoever the nominee is, I believe it should be the two sides of parliament who should make a statement”. She had no further comment to make.
The PN had already nominated Spiteri Debono, 71, for the standards commission job in January 2023 but she said she was not interested in the position.
One PN source said: “Grech has made it clear that nobody from the Joseph Muscat team would be acceptable to the PN and Spiteri Debono doesn’t belong to that group. The party respects her, and she was one of the few from the Labour camp to acknowledge the horror behind Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination and to call for redemption. She’s definitely the frontrunner.”
During a Victory Day speech in September 2021, Spiteri Debono paid tribute to the murdered journalist, calling on the nation to “redeem ourselves anew” and commit to the necessary reforms in the wake of the assassination.
“This was an execution, intimately connected with the investigations she conducted in the exercise of her profession as a journalist. It would help everyone to
The party respects her... She’s definitely the frontrunner
Meanwhile, nothing has been done to allow law enforcement to use special techniques such as wiretaps when investigating cases of corruption (“not even a legal analysis of what would be a possible way forward”, the report’s authors say).
Malta must also do more to limit the number of persons of trust and make sure that they follow higher standards of integrity, GRECO says, adding that it cannot consider this recommendation to be satisfactorily implemented “until further measures are taken”.
GRECO describes Malta’s failure to develop an integrity strategy for top officials as “regrettable”, hoping that an ongoing project on improving Malta’s transparency framework launched at the request of the standards commissioner will yield results by the time the next evaluation is carried out.
GRECO says that Malta has been successful in improving the police force’s communications strategy and in developing a strategy through which public institutions with regulatory functions can be more accountable and better-resourced, particularly through a National AntiFraud and Corruption Strategy.
However, several other recommendations remain on the drawing board, with GRECO saying that “only a modest progress” being recorded in several others, particularly those related to persons with top executive functions.
The Maltese authorities have been asked to submit an update on its progress by the end of this year.