Divorce movement’s ‘yes to marriage’

People should be asked to vote on a specific divorce law in a referendum, the pro-divorce movement said during the launch of its new logo and slogan yesterday.

The question in an eventual referendum on divorce should make reference to the salient points of the Bill currently before Parliament so that people would know what they were voting for, Moviment Iva Għad-Divorzju chairman Deborah Schembri said.

The movement’s new rallying cry sees the initial Yes to Divorce slogan joined by Yes to Marriage.

Dr Schembri said the movement was in favour of divorce because it gave people whose marriage had failed a chance to re-marry. The current state of affairs, she said, forced people whose marriage had broken down into cohabitation.

Asked about the new organisation which would campaign against divorce, Dr Schembri said her movement wanted to give people more rights.

“This is the primary distinction between us. We want to give people a chance to re-marry while the opposing camp want to deny separated people that possibility,” she said.

The introduction of divorce would not usher in a divorce mentality because, today, without divorce, people whose marriage had failed were already going their separate ways. A divorce law would not change this mentality but it would regularise what happened afterwards, Dr Schembri said.

Asked if the 1995 Church/State agreement would impact on legislation for the introduction of divorce, Dr Schembri said it would not conflict with the divorce law. As things stand, in annulment cases proceedings in the civil court have to stop until the outcome of a Church tribunal decision if one of the parties opts for the latter.

Dr Schembri said this would not happen in the case of divorce because it was not covered by the Church/State agreement, making it purely a civil matter.

Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, who initially piloted the Private Member’s Bill last year, said the movement was not there to campaign for a referendum but for the enactment of a divorce law.

However, he agreed with Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi that such a decision was best taken by the people since no party in Parliament had an electoral mandate to introduce divorce.

Dr Gonzi made it clear last week that a roadmap on how the issue would be settled would be made public at the end of the month after the PN concluded its internal discussion.

Asked what decision the PN was expected to take, Dr Pullicino Orlando said the debate was carrying on and hinted that the party would probably toe Dr Gonzi’s line and propose a parliamentary debate on divorce and a referendum.

The logo launch was marred by a mistake in the slogan, which was not written in Maltese fonts, prompting a barrage of negative comments on timesofmalta.com. The movement later re-issued the logo with Maltese fonts and yet it had another mistake when “divorzju” was written with a ż.

The movement then apologised for the mistake and re-sent a correctly spelt logo. However, criticism of what the logo attempts to convey was also widespread.

Made up of faceless adults and children, the logo depicts a couple with a child going separate ways and forming new families with other people. The separated parents though are both holding their child’s hands, while one of them also has a child from his new family.

Although the logo attempts to convey a sense of harmony by showing the child of the divorced family holding both his parents’ hands while the new families are seemingly happy, it attracted a lot of criticism.

Some described it as celebrating a hotchpotch of families with people doing as they pleased. Others pointed out that the child of the divorced parents got the worst deal, having been caught in the middle, while the colour red used to depict the children was equated with danger.

Someone else gave a totally different interpretation, insisting she saw the logo depicting families on good terms with each other and parents sharing responsibilities.

Those present for the launch included Labour MP Evarist Bar-tolo, Labour European Parliament candidate Marlene Mizzi, AD chairman Michael Briguglio and AD civil rights spokesman Yvonne Ebejer Arqueros.