Laurence Gonzi and some of his parliamentarians, as well as a number of PL MPs, are procrastinating or even avoiding the divorce issue for fear of losing votes and/or to impose their moral values on their constituents. The issue shouldn't be about religion and politics - it's about what two parties contract to and their legal right to rescind from. The government and the majority have no legal or moral right to dictate to the minority what they consider as righteous to them and evil to the others. We elect our MPs to take care of our temporal needs; priests and prelates are quite capable of guiding us in the spiritual matters.
It is a misnomer to describe divorce as "the terminator of a marriage". A marriage terminates due to many different reasons and divorce is only the instrument to regulate the financial and material aspect of the broken marriage and allowing the split partners to get on with their lives and marry different persons if that is what they want. One may not agree, fine, I have no difficulty to accept that, but I'm lost for words when I see "the happily married lot" imposing on the "unhappily married others". It's not right and Lawrence Gonzi ought to get on with it as some people are getting confused, hurt and are also suffering.
Having said that, in all argumentation, one has to keep in mind the moral, social and psychological well-being of the children who are never to blame for the whims, feelings or faults of their parents! As a society which plans and legislates for the "good of all" we need to be responsible enough to take this factor into consideration within the whole context; but this doesn't amount to an absolute no to divorce.
The Labour MPs, the Labour top brass as well as the Labour supporters are not exactly united on the divorce issue either but, unlike Dr Gonzi, Joseph Muscat's style is not one of imposition, and this is one reason why the issue is going to be an uphill climb.
The second reason is an obvious one - the divorce issue had been dragging since the time of the Integration campaign. It is an extremely hot and dangerous issue and had Dr Muscat imposed it on his "to do list" he would be risking an internal split and a haemorrhage of Labour voters' abstentions.
And he is not that naïve to offer the PN another electoral victory on a silver platter. Does this make him an opportunist? No, definitely not, it makes him a realist because if Labour doesn't win the next election we would still be without divorce legislation. Priority number one is for the PL to be in government, the only way to stop the present corrupt practices and political injustices.
What then is the right solution which would not politically advantage or disadvantage any of the political parties? A free vote in Parliament to both sides of the house would be the natural answer.