A marriage made in heaven

In my view, the quality of democracy is at a basic minimum with majority rule and reaches higher levels in securing the protection of minorities. Contrary to what was stated by Klaus Vella Bardon - Safeguarding The Family, February 5 - neither I nor Alternattiva Demokratika have ever stated that we would make the issue of divorce a sine qua non of any coalition negotiations should our support be sought to form a government.

Divorce is one of very many important issues that would feature in any such negotiations. The financing of political parties by unelected moguls is one, the introduction of a proper Freedom of Information Act to empower citizens and the media is another, as is the need for an effective Whistleblower Act to expose and pre-empt corruption as far as possible. Such issues are not peculiarly environmental but have been in our manifesto since the first election we contested in 1992. They are a measure of our commitment to democracy and of our acknowledgement of the need to upgrade that presently available to Maltese citizens.

Clearly we would give the issue of divorce considerable weight. Our position in favour of the right to remarry following separation has been unequivocal since 1992 and our commitment to those who support us on this issue will not be neglected. We have stated clearly that, in any coalition negotiations, we will seek to acquire for our support the consensus of our coalition partner on as many of such issues as possible. This clearly includes divorce. Such a consensus would allow the formation of a government by binding together a majority of seats in Parliament. We see no violation of democratic rules in any such process.

Dr Vella Bardon appears to have it completely wrong also on the issue of AD's position on Church-state relations. Our commitment to democracy is expressed in an equally profound commitment to the freedom of expression and the freedom of worship guaranteed in the Constitution. We have never in any instance contested the right of the Church and of its faithful to teach and to act on Church doctrine.

Nor would we deny the Church any right to address an issue such as divorce from a purely social point of view as Archbishop Mgr Paul Cremona did on Georg Sapiano's television show Doksa. As a guest on the same show, I was glad to be able to welcome such developments.

On numerous occasions we have welcomed the interventions of the Church or of Church commissions whether it was about allegations of corruption at Mepa, the sham site selection exercise made for the Marsascala recycling plant and, more recently, the concerns expressed with regard to the social impact of the price of property.

Nobody in AD has ever failed to give a respectful ear to anything the Church has to say in view of its pre-eminent position in Maltese society and culture above and beyond its religious function. We do not fail to do so now that we do not share the position of the Church on this issue.

While we must also respect the right of many Maltese citizens to defer to Church teaching and indeed to the position taken by the Church on a social issue, quite apart from Church teaching, we do object to and contest the partisan exploitation of such popular loyalty.

It is very clear that the Church does not and cannot impose its views but it is also very clear that both the other political parties are afraid to be seen to be contradicting the Church on anything. In fact, their pandering to religiosity (as opposed to religion) in their press and their media, renders them ridiculous in our view. It is an attempt to take ownership of religion for political purposes: a short-sighted and dangerous tactic that has made political discourse unreal and, for the last three decades, has deprived the Church of the freedom to be as outspoken as it could be from its own standpoint on matters subject to partisan controversy. Since almost anything could be politically controversial in Malta, the process by which the other political parties have painted themselves into tight corners has also restricted the Church.

As a political party, AD would never presume to approve or disapprove of Church doctrine. It is not our place. However, should the Church participate in a matter of political controversy from a social aspect, AD would be abdicating its functions as a political party if it deferred to Church opinion automatically and, worse still, if it abandoned a long-standing policy out of fear of negative electoral consequences. It would also devalue any agreement with the Church on other issues. Our respectful dissent on the issue of divorce is a measure of our respect for the right the Church has to participate in such debates. This we consider to be far more credible than the self-inflicted taboos of the other political parties and their hypocritical electoral timidity.

If there is one aspect on which we can all agree it is that the matter of divorce, the right to remarry following a separation is still a matter of great controversy. Recent polls describe public opinion as split neatly down the middle. It is noteworthy that don't knows and don't-want-to-says are exceptionally absent on this issue in stark contrast to the expressions of support or otherwise for political parties.

The Nationalist Party conserves the over-my-dead-body tradition of its leadership in combination with the dissent of prominent Nationalist personalities.

The Labour Party makes smoke in the opposite direction with its leader disavowed by his party for having initiated a debate on the issue during his term of office as Prime Minister.

Both have a no-to-divorce-maybe stance confused by significant dissent. Only AD has said yes, leaving it in exceptional possession of the support of 49.4 per cent of the public on this issue.

Our combined ignorance and arrogance has been eloquently condemned by Ranier Fsadni in view of the lack of reliable statistics on which to base an opinion of the social harm/benefit of any change to relevant legislation. Everybody, including the Church and Dr Vella Bardon, who has presumed to mention social harm/benefits deriving from any amendment to the law, suffers equally from the rebuke.

What I find remarkable is that the lack of statistics has only just now been brought to public attention. Has nobody in government taken an interest in the matter in the last 31-odd years since the introduction of the Marriage Act in 1975? Without Maltese facts and figures, all the references, fair and otherwise, to situations abroad make little sense.

Naturally, there are grounds for suspicion that the chorus now clamouring for facts and figures are happy to delay any decision on the issue until we have an authoritative opinion from the experts, some time after the looming election. Given the trend in the polls, that would allow more time for the 49.4 per cent yes minority to become a significant majority, and in due course to eliminate any real electoral danger for our majoritarian colleagues.

From where we stand, this is no way to lead or govern a country. Instead of leadership we seem to have two teams whose only function is to guess at the change of direction of the crowd behind them rather than to determine which way it is best to go and on what grounds. If it had been up to political leadership of this kind, adultery would still be a crime in Malta as would homosexuality. Neither Alfred Sant nor Lawrence Gonzi would have had the political clout to evict the police from our bedrooms. We would still be awaiting social statistics and wondering when a referendum would be held.

Meanwhile, thousands of people are denied the right to remarry. For them it is not a matter of electoral metaphysics but a matter of daily life. The state denies them the benefits and mutual obligations of marriage. Their home can never be a matrimonial home. What of the property regime governing their assets? Do they have rights to inherit one another? What happens if things go wrong between them? How about these undocumented separations and their legal consequences? Does the Mifsud Bonnici mediation system cater for the separation of cohabitants too? Will it soon? To save marriages that are not allowed to happen? It becomes surreal.

The Archbishop has ventured into virtually uncharted waters in acknowledging the need for justice and fairness in all situations of cohabitation. His honesty will allow the PN to find the courage to revisit its pre-1998 electoral promise to regulate cohabitation by law. It was the PN's electoral response to Labour's promise of a referendum on divorce if returned to government after the 1998 election.

While the Greens favour the establishment of norms to govern the increasing number of irregular unions, we cannot help but note the 1998 U-turn on cohabitation which became an S-bend through its abandonment since and now promises to become a political hieroglyphic when the PN returns to the matter. The PN compromise factory will market this stop-gap concession to pressure on divorce while continuing to denounce any move on divorce as a threat to the family and the institution of marriage.

The confusion is complete. By steadfastly fighting a rearguard action on divorce, the PN has failed to acknowledge the increasing number of separations resulting in the formation of irregular unions, families in every sense but legal. Because divorce is not available to bring such families and marriages into the well-known and well-established parameters of the legitimate family formed by marriage, we have had a normalisation of cohabitation and an erosion of the concept of marriage to an extent never acknowledged by the anti-divorce lobby.

With legislation on cohabitation aimed at delaying divorce by a decade or two, we will create a situation unparalleled elsewhere. Everything is to be done to make the families of cohabiting couples equal at law to those of married couples. Everything is to be done to prevent them remarrying, to allow them to call their union a marriage. It makes no sense at all. All the statistics we may care to collect will bear no resemblance to those elsewhere and the current odious comparisons will simply become more nonsensical.

It certainly should make no sense to people whose objection to divorce is the change in the concept of marriage, those who claim that it would make marriage a less permanent commitment and those who claim that divorce would lead to a decline in marriages and an increase in cohabitation as seems to be the trend elsewhere. If marriage and cohabitation become indistinguishable, will the institution of marriage have been better served than by permitting second marriages?

AD has consistently championed the right to remarry because it does not see any legal logic in the present situation in which a Maltese judge must acknowledge the foreign divorce of a Maltese couple married in Malta by civil or religious rite but has no power to grant the right to remarry to anyone. Whether people choose to remarry or not following a separation should be a matter for them to decide and not for the law by making it impossible. It is as simple as that.

What it boils down to is a balance between the real or perceived social harm that may or may not ensue with the introduction of divorce against the denial of freedom to remarry to thousands of people now and in the foreseeable future. In our view the balance tips steeply in favour of allowing remarriage also because of the rowing anomaly of couples obliged to cohabit when they would prefer to marry. Others see it otherwise. Neither side need get too hot under the collar, demonise the opposition or claim sainthood. We can agree to disagree. AD has a clear and a clearly defensible policy and we intend to stick to it.

Dr Vassallo is the chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika