1. “I don’t want the image of the presidency to be overshadowed with [charity] alone.”

As head of the Malta Community Chest Fund, Malta’s President is often only seen as the organiser of the annual telethon L-Istrina and other charitable events. Vella said this is a great cause but there are also many other interests and projects which he plans to get involved in. He even said MCCF may need some pruning and controls to make sure money is going to the right people.

2. “All my staff, except for two or three exceptions are female, including the secretary to the presidency.”

Asked how it felt to succeed Malta’s second female president, Vella said he is making up for the fact that he is a man by making sure practically all his staff are women. Vella succeeded Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, Malta’s second female president after Agatha Barbara whose term came to an end back in 1987.

3. “Malta’s democracy ranks very well compared to many countries in the EU”

Vella was cautious over the criticism levelled against Malta regarding the state of democracy and rule of law. He said there was always room for improvement, as was being done through the Steering Committee for Constitutional Reform. But he stressed that Malta’s state of democracy compares well even to EU counterparts.

4. “I don’t think there is this degree of impunity.”

Asked whether there was a culture of impunity in Malta, Vella first said this was “a highly political question” but he quickly answered it anyway: “I don’t think there is this degree of impunity.” He added that it was up to the politicians to point out exactly where they think things were lacking and suggest ways and means of blocking such deficiencies.

5. “What we’re doing is we’re opening up a website, we’re inviting everybody: civil society, NGOs, individuals, political parties, academics, to put in their input.”

Vella would not commit to delivering wholesale constitutional reform by the time he ends his presidency but he did say he was taking the bull by the horns and doing his best. He promised to launch a website in the coming days to allow people to give their suggestions. These suggestions would then be analysed and used for an eventual Constitutional Assembly.

6. “I do not agree that the party in opposition is in a complete meltdown in the sense that it is going to disappear.”

Asked if Malta was at risk of becoming a one-party state, Vella said: “God forbid”, arguing that it would ruin democracy and be “dangerous”. He also augured the Nationalist Party well and said he did not think it risked a total collapse. He stressed that the Nationalist Party’s survival was not only important for democracy but also for the government itself which required controls.

7. “We were at one time also going through difficult times, not excuse the comparison, but not as bad. Honestly.”

Vella recalled being deputy leader of the Malta Labour Party at a time when it too was in a crisis of unelectability. This was when he, like many others, went out of his way to try and find suitable leadership candidates and he had identified Joseph Muscat. Vella made a point to say that those times were still not as bad as the current crisis being faced by the Nationalist Party.

8. “Joseph Muscat’s name was being included in certain lists but you can imagine, you’ve seen what happened. This was horse-trading at its worst.”

Vella disagreed with the assertion that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was not considered for a top EU job. He said Muscat was included in “some lists”. Vella also argued that the whole process with which the EU appointed such roles was “horse-trading at its worst” and whoever was prepared to be part of such a race should have been ready to accept any decision.

9. On recreational cannabis: “What sense does it make to put something on the market, make it free, while knowing that within five, six, 10, years you’re going to go on a campaign to try and dissuade people from using it?”

Vella is in favour of medicinal cannabis, which he compares to other drugs like morphine. However, he is adamantly against legalisation of cannabis for recreational use, arguing that the substance is harmful to people and should therefore not be made any more available than it is today. He said the medical literature was clear on the harm cannabis caused.

10. On abortion: “I would go for a massive educational campaign, provision of contraceptives, educating young people not to go beyond certain norms, because obviously you have to carry consequences.”

Vella spoke at length about his opposition to abortion, arguing that it was effectively the killing of a baby and no different to killing a 12-year-old child. He said it was misleading to talk about abortion in terms of when a mother’s life is in danger because doctors already do what they can in such cases to save the mother and baby. In cases of rape, Vella argued that this was “the thin edge of the wedge the people in favour of abortion start pushing to open up the gap”. He said the vast majority of Malta was against abortion. He also dismissed the medical literature on abortion as being merely on opinion.

11. On the Palestinian cause: “I mean this is not something which one can accept just like that, year in year out, year in year out.”

Vella has always been vocally in favour of the Palestinian cause and argued that the way these people have been treated was unacceptable. He said he would have been a vocal critic even if such acts were being committed by the Vatican.

12. “You either carry on being a small economy with slow growth and the attendant results but if you rev up the engines as you have done in the last 10, 15 years and the economy practically after 2008 started going from good to getting better, one will have to pay a price. Now it depends, and this is the work politicians should do in my opinion to decide where to stop and where to turn down the accelerator.”

Asked about the rapid development being seen in Malta and the way it was affecting our identity, Vella made it clear that change was normal. However, he conceded that Malta experienced faster change than usual over the past 15 years. While there were many positive attributes to such change, it was now up to politicians to see how much further to fuel the economic accelerator or slow it down.

13. “Today I think the pace of things is going so fast that young people today might be tempted to feel more cosmopolitan more belonging to a European context or a wider context to Malta.”

Vella said young people should feel obliged to carry the Maltese flag to future generations and be proud of being Maltese. He warned against being so cosmopolitan that one loses a sense of nationality. He added: “I’m not talking about nationalism and I’m not talking about narrow-minded patriotism. I’m talking about Malta with its achievements, with its history, with its culture, with all the beautiful things we have in the context of a Mediterranean culture and Mediterranean background and also Euro-African relationships.”

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