Interview • March 7 2004

At the end of his term

In less than two months time, President Guido de Marco will end his term at the Palace, but Karl Schembri finds him anything but in retirement mood

As the end of his term gets nearer, President Guido de Marco seems to delight himself with the speculation about his possible candidature to the European Parliament.
The seasoned, 72-year-old diplomat does not give ‘no’ for an answer – he rarely does – but true to his internationalist worldview, he seems to be looking beyond Maltese shores.
“A lot of things have been mentioned, but in all honesty, I haven’t decided yet,” he says. “I’m a person who lives politics, but if you ask me, five years as President makes you look at politics from a non-partisan viewpoint.
“Whatever my contribution may eventually be, I would like to do it within a national perspective. So if we’re talking about Europe, we can’t take a partisan stand to the EU. We can’t afford it.
“Our participation at the European Parliament will require the skills of realising that our limited contingent has to play its full part in ensuring that the interests of Malta as a member of the Union will be properly looked after. We have to be careful lest we dilute our presence through mediocrity and through divisiveness.
“Whilst political belonging and party affiliation will certainly characterise the dynamics as well as the selection of our Maltese MEPs, let us hope that in our rationale we will be guided by our national interest within a European context rather than by the fragmentation of party politics.”
Malta’s contribution to world affairs remains de Marco’s top priority. A plaque outside the Palace quotes the Pope’s words before leaving Malta on his last visit, calling on the Maltese to be builders of bridges between the north and south of the Mediterranean.”
“I think that’s an excellent mission statement for the Maltese people, that’s why I put it there,” President de Marco says. “For the first time we have reached a stage where we are talking with one voice on foreign policy. That is something. I’ve been in politics since Independence and we have always been divided. Today we agree on the UN’s multilateral role.
“Today we believe in Malta’s role in the Mediterranean. Today we agree we should be in the EU. Now it’s a question of giving our contribution to Europe. We have to move from village square politics without failing to listen to what is said in the village square.
“We have to stop being parochial, but we have to be close to the people’s concerns. The moment a leader loses touch with his people, the people will lose sight of him. A leader should lead, be ahead of the people, but not to the extent that the people will lose sight of him.”
Looking back, Prof. de Marco says the presidency evolved hand in hand with Malta’s history and he believes that he did his best to live to his pledge to be “a President of all the people,” even during the time of the crucial and divisive EU membership issue.
“EU membership of course dominated the national debate,” he says. “As President you have to make sure that the debate is a democratic one, and the parties contributed in that regard. It was a vigorous debate where everyone had the possibility to state his views. “The most positive thing about it was that after the electoral result the Labour Party took a clear stand by saying that the people had decided and that it would stand by the people’s sovereign will.
“I had always said that everyone was free to take any stand on the EU but everyone was bound to respect the people’s decision. Today one can state that we’re joining the EU as a united nation, and this is also thanks to the maturity of Maltese political parties.”
Himself the former chairman of a commission that had proposed giving new powers to the President in a report back in the eighties, he feels those proposals should be taken up again and considered.
“I believe that report should be studied,” he says. “Maybe at that time it was premature, probably it was looking too far ahead, but I believe that now is the time to look at that report again and see what we can pick up from it.”
But more than new powers, Prof. de Marco believes that the president is to exercise moral “authority.”
“Every President has to build this moral authority,” he explains. “This is the most important authority the president can have. Through it he can convince, he can earn respect for his viewpoints. That’s where you exercise real authority. In a way it’s like the press: it does not have power but through its stand and credibility has the authority to convince, to put forward new ideas.”
Does he think the new president should be selected from outside the political class?
“I agree that there shouldn’t be any restriction about the President’s background, except those outlined by the Constitution itself,” Prof. de Marco says.
“The president can be chosen from several sectors: university, trade unions, and what have you, but possibly the most prepared are politicians, because the presidency is a political post, not an academic one. That doesn’t mean, however, that politicians are the only persons who can make good presidents.”
Occupying “the country’s highest post” might be easily construed as the apex of one’s political career, but Prof. de Marco dismisses the suggestion.
“I’m not a ‘posts’ man,” he says. “I don’t consider the apex on the basis of my formal position, but on the merits of what I accomplish.”
As home affairs minister, he took stock of the police corps and kept it at arms length from the partisan and corrupting elements that were only too evident under the previous government. As foreign affairs minister, he re-established the diplomatic corps, presented Malta’s official request to join the EU and reactivated it after the 1998 elections - “I wanted to get Malta fast on track and on the fast track,” he says. Also as foreign affairs minister, he was elected President of the UN General Assembly.
“Life is full of such moments – I don’t view life in terms of climaxes, but on what one accomplishes for one’s country or for the common good in international affairs,” Prof. de Marco says. “The presidency was a very positive experience, a continuation of my political role. I have always believed that this country needs someone who unites it. It’s very easy to separate the people and very difficult to unite them. Through my political experience I have learned that a divided country only stands to lose.
“In very difficult periods of our history I have sought the road of agreement. When the PN entered Parliament after the 1981 perverse electoral result, I gave my contribution together with the then President Agatha Barbara to ensure there were the right conditions so that the PN parliamentary group could re-enter parliament.
“I was very involved in the most critical period of our political history to secure constitutional amendments at a time when a lot of people were predicting a civil war. Together with Dom Mintoff we found the formula guaranteeing that the party which gets the absolute majority of votes would get the absolute majority of seats. We used to spend long nights discussing how to find a solution for the good of Malta.”
At that time, people from de Marco’s own party could not understand what he was up to.
“People in my party had every reason to be sceptical about an agreement,” he says. “Don’t forget the political climate at that time. There was violence, we had tal-Barrani, Raymond Caruana… it was extremely difficult. “They would ask ‘but what is Guido up to, speaking to Mintoff?’ I couldn’t blame them, I understood them actually; and Mintoff faced the same inside his own party, but both of us were convinced that we were doing the right thing.”
Nowadays the country is facing new problems and challenges. The electoral system, the judiciary and the financing of political parties are among the main areas where institutional reform is believed to badly needed, but Prof. de Marco says one should keep in mind “the pulse of the people.”
“I believe in an open debate because it is always beneficial,” he says. “Politicians should always keep a feel of the pulse of the people. Interpreting the pulse rate depends on the capabilities of the doctor.”
Public Broadcasting Services is another target of reforms although so far the messages from the government have only indicated a concern with staff and budget cuts without any vision for the national public service broadcaster. Is the president concerned that PBS is going to end up like the other television stations, ignoring its mission as a national public service broadcaster?
“I have no right to interfere in the financial aspect of the reforms but I will definitely interfere on one thing: we also need a broadcasting media that is independent of the political parties,” Prof. de Marco says. “Today both the PN and MLP have their own media. This makes me even more convinced that we need PBS, because it is the only medium which can open an objective window on current affairs.
“I believe that the Maltese people have a right to a national and independent broadcasting service, ensuring that objectivity which political party broadcasting does not necessarily fulfil. This is a democratic prerequisite.”
Meanwhile, the recent spate of deaths because of drug overdoses is also calling for immediate attention, particularly to a shift of emphasis from prosecution to life-saving, literally. The President, who also heads an informal forum made of people involved in the fight against drugs, believes there should be a distinction between drug traffickers and drug users.
“If you can save an individual from drugs you have gained much more than if you send him to prison,” Prof. de Marco says. “This is where society has to distinguish, between the drug traffickers and the drug victims. My heart is with the victims and with their parents.
“There are problems; you find contradictions in the system. There are individuals who go through rehabilitation and then are still sent to prison. What do we want to do, to punish or to save lives? We have to stop pontificating and learn from our own mistakes.”
President de Marco says he has a vision for Malta, “one where the workers find employment within an ever-improving quality of life, where Malta and the Maltese people find stability and democracy within the EU and contribute towards peace and better understanding within the Mediterranean region.”
This could well be the vision of someone planning to stand for the EP elections in a few weeks time.