'Is public virtue dead?’ Shelley to the president – Eddie Aquilina

Friday, July 8, was the 200th anniversary of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s premature death in 1822, a month shy of his 30th birthday. He died while sailing from Livorno to Lerici, in Italy, after visiting his friend and fellow poet Lord Byron.

Though Shelley lived more than two centuries ago, he still speaks clearly to our age in his poetry, chastising political and moral corruption.

While this bicentenary was being commemorated, mostly in England and Italy, in Malta, hidden from the public, morally corrupt machinations were being put in motion to get the IVF amendment bill signed not by President George Vella, but by Acting President Frank Bezzina, without Vella honourably resigning. Resigning would have been the only proper thing to do.

There’s no beating about the bush: circumstances where a head of state refuses to sign a bill amounts to a constitutional crisis.

In such circumstances, the only way out for a republic (meaning ‘public good’) worthy of its name is to see the president (very honourably) resign and the election of a new president who would, presumably, sign the bill. Of course, this does not happen in banana republics. What has already happened in Malta reeks of the...