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The president doesn’t have the facility to disregard a regulation handed democratically by parliament, President George Vella advised an viewers in Gozo on Friday.
Vella’s phrases successfully shut the door on hopes by some factions that he would refuse to signal a hashish reform invoice into regulation. The invoice sailed by way of parliament this week and now awaits his signature.
“By no means can the president, beneath our system, impose his choice on these representing the folks in parliament, whether or not he agrees with it or not,” Vella mentioned.
“The president’s function is to not get up within the morning and resolve whether or not or not he agrees with one factor or one other.”
The hashish invoice, which was passed by parliament this week, will permit leisure hashish customers to eat, purchase and develop the plant in small portions. It would additionally permit customers with felony information for hashish possession to have them expunged.
The Chamber of Pharmacists and nurses’ union, which lobbied towards the regulation, had been amongst these to have made explicit calls for the president to refuse to sign the invoice, within the curiosity of residents’ well being.
Talking on Friday at a Republic Day occasion in Gozo and with out ever making direct reference to any explicit challenge or regulation, the president shot down such options.
“Nowhere in our structure does it state that the president can resolve whether or not he agrees or not [with a law]. This makes completely no sense,” Vella mentioned.
“The president’s powers are restricted, and the boundaries on them are clear. No person can resolve to disregard them and transcend what the regulation offers. In any other case, we find yourself making a dictator who decides what he likes what he doesn’t.”
He reiterated that time a number of instances throughout his 20-minute speech, noting that Malta’s structure doesn’t present for a president with decision-making energy.
Failing to stay to the confines of the regulation may additionally set off instability and a political disaster, he famous.
President Vella – a medical physician who has beforehand mentioned that he would rather resign than signal any regulation allowing abortion – mentioned {that a} president may resolve to step apart if confronted with a “grave ethical objection” to a regulation.
Within the absence of an ethical objection that severe, the president’s obligation was to signal legal guidelines handed by parliament.
Critics of the hashish reform plans have argued that the federal government is ignoring the general public’s calls by passing such a regulation.
However such calls must be quantified, Vella famous in his speech.
“How do measure public calls? Is it whoever has the most important microphone? Is it by seeing these most in a position to mobilise folks?”
In Malta’s democracy, he famous, essentially the most easy means of quantifying the general public’s opinion on any explicit matter was by holding a consultative or abrogative referendum.
A newly-formed political social gathering led by Ivan Grech Mintoff is doing simply that, having introduced on Wednesday that it might be launching a petition with the purpose of forcing a referendum on the hashish challenge.
The Nationalist Social gathering, which opposed the hashish invoice in parliament, has mentioned that it doesn’t consider that the problem ought to be the topic of a referendum. As an alternative, it mentioned that if in authorities it might undertake a “holistic reform” primarily based on information that ensured hashish isn’t promoted whereas making certain that customers should not criminalised.
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