Raphael Vassallo | Sunday, 28 December 2008

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Unborn Presidents’ Society

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. For in case it has not yet dawned on you, the coming year is also the year when the incumbent President of the Republic’s term of office finally comes to an end.
Now I don’t know about you, but speaking entirely for myself, I have already booked the wig I shall require after tearing all my hair out in intense vexation at this inevitable tragedy. I mean, honestly. No more Eddie Fenech Adami, to endlessly inform us that Malta is the private property of the Catholic Church? How on earth is a poor, misguided secularist to be reminded that this is not his country, regardless of what his passport says?
To be perfectly frank, I do not think a catastrophe of such monolithic proportions has befallen the island’s satirists and cartoonists since the tragic death, in 2002, of the late Spiridione Sant. And yet, people seem to go on living their everyday lives for all the world as though this imminent doom were not hanging over our heads like a national sword of Damocles; as though life would carry on regardless, without the venerable EFA to see to it that the sun will continue to rise in the morning and set in the evening, all under his personal supervision.
The more I think about it, the more inclined I am to agree with the likes of President Bouteflike of Algeria, or Vladimir Putin of Russia... you know, that grand old tradition of benevolent patriarchs, who use their executive powers for the noble purpose of extending their own terms of office while the going is good.
These, after all, are people who understand their unique importance in the greater scheme of things. They know that the moment they themselves step down and cease to play any part in public life, the entire planet will simply fall apart at the seams.
But still, reality remains that cold, unreasonable and inflexible thing it is, and regardless of our entreaties, Dr Fenech Adami will have to step down come around April (unless, of course, His Excellency can be persuaded to stage a successful coup d’etat.) And already tongues are wagging as to which poor sod – I mean, which eminently worthy individual – will be called upon to reluctantly take his place.
Well: I have given the matter a very great deal of thought over the past, oooh, seven minutes? And having weighed all options to a nicety in the scales of common sense (which, by the way, has unreasonably insisted on remaining two separate words when used as a noun, and one only as an adjective, despite various protestations to the contrary), I can now predict with perfect accuracy the likeliest candidate for the post.

The unborn child.
That’s right, folks: a human foetus, as President of the Republic. For as the Gift of Life Foundation keeps reminding us, it is not enough to loudly proclaim one’s own pro-life credentials at every conceivable (ahem) opportunity. No, in order to REALLY be considered pro-life, one must also stick “+9” posters upon every available surface; one must fight indefatigably for the rights of the unborn child at all times, and in every available forum... not, of course, in foreign countries where millions of pregnancies are aborted each and every day; but only here in Malta, where abortion is already illegal (a fact which conveniently makes it a good deal easier to fight).
And yet, the reality on the ground is that foetuses remain severely under-represented in all aspects of public life. Never mind that they dominate the letters pages of certain daily newspapers: in practice, I have yet to hear of a single unborn bank manager, or an embryo or zygote heading any serious trade union. Meanwhile, the number of foetuses occupying seats in parliament has consistently remained zero since Independence, while the prospect of a blastocyst being appointed to the leadership of a political party remains on the low side (although on this score, we have admittedly come close).
Make no mistake: this is discrimination at its most heinous. So instead of merely amending the Constitution to grant foetuses more human rights than people who have actually being born, I suggest we address this injustice once and for all, and become the first democratic nation on earth to name an Unborn Child as its Head of State.
Think for a moment of the overwhelming advantages. The exchequer, for instance, would save a small fortune which would otherwise have to be spent on the President’s wardrobe. A personal driver would no longer be a necessary prerequisite, as the President of the Republic will already be chauffeured around in the comfort and warmth of his own mother’s uterus. And by the same token, there will be no reason whatsoever to allot various historical palaces for the President to call home (but not to actually reside in).
Having said that, I admit that the technical challenges would be enormous. Can you imagine, for instance, the first-ever unborn President’s televised address to the nation... via ultrasound?
I can picture the scene already: an army of cooing mums, all glued to their TV sets and saying “ooh” and “aah” over what parts of the President’s anatomy they think they can recognise on the screen. Is that the Presidential pecker, or just his umbilical cord getting in the way? (Well, it’s hard to say, as the President’s gender will not actually be discernable before at least his twelfth week in office.)
As for the traditional Christmas Day speech, this annual event will be greatly enhanced by the fact that Presidential Foetus will not a have any functional vocal cords for its first few weeks of existence; and even when these are fully formed, articulation will be greatly curtailed by the uterine liquids which fill its mouth, throat and lungs. This will automatically limit the Presidential address to at most a few gurgling noises here and there... as well as, if we are particularly lucky, an audible kick to the uterus lining.
I need hardly add that this would represent an enormous improvement over virtually all its predecessors’ efforts; And besides, for similarly anatomical reasons, the new President – unlike any of his peers – will also be physically incapable of putting its foot into its mouth.
On the downside, though, it must be pointed out that a foetus will lack any form of consciousness for the first few months of its gestation period. But then again, lacking a conscience has hardly been considered a problem in the past; personally, I fail to see why people should suddenly object to it now.
Altogether more serious is the inevitable drawback that would limit an unborn President’s term of office to a maximum of nine months. This is because human foetuses appear to unreasonably insist on actually being born after roughly that length of time. So suddenly, your previously precious little unborn child – so worthy of protection at all its stages – becomes just another, perfectly ordinary baby instead... whereupon, of course, it immediately loses all its value.
This is presumably why the “Movement for the Protection and Care of the Unborn Child” will suddenly lose interest in protecting and caring for the same human being once it is outside the womb. It also explains – among countless other anomalies – why we have a movement to inscribe the rights and privileges of unborn children into the Constitution... but no corresponding organisation to clamour in protest at the many injustices faced by children who have been born on an almost daily basis.
Above all, it illustrates with absolute clarity why persons charged with gang-raping a 12-year-old girl in Gozo were placed under house arrest for the duration of their trial... while, in a separate case, the same legal system sentenced a 13-year-old girl to prison for a week, for the grave crime of pulling another child’s hair.
After all, who the hell cares about protecting and caring for children, when the rights of foetuses are so much easier to defend?

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