ENOUGH WITH THE REFERENDUM

Mr Pullicino Orlando has got himself into a bit of a tizzy because the motion that will now be debated in Parliament, at least as it stands today before someone else messes around with it, precludes a referendum being held if a majority of Honourables vote against the introduction of divorce.

Frankly, I find his position ludicrous: if Mr Pullicino Orlando wanted a referendum, he should have proposed a resolution in this sense in the first place, instead of trying to bounce his PM and Party with a wild-cat Private Member's Bill.

I am on record, from day one, as being against the great unwashed, me included, voting on the introduction of a civil law mechanism that will be used only by a minority, and I would have expected Pullicino Orlando, as the chap who started all this, to at least have had the courage of his convictions and stood for the Honourable Members doing their duty and legislating, rather than passing the buck on to us, who elected them to the House to legislate.

Perhaps JPO wasn't prepared for the back-lash he got, thinking that just because he thought that divorce was a shoo-in, he was going to get back-slapped and attaboyed by everyone. Now that it's pretty darn clear that there's (sadly for the liberals amongst us) a pretty heavy groundswell against his idea, he's quite happy to have the electorate reject or accept it and wash his hands of the whole thing.

To my mind, this is craven and self-serving and at the very least demonstrates that his capacity for forward planning is sorely lacking.

While we're at it, the pro-divorce movement would do well to shed its own blinkers and at least demand that Parliamentarians do what's left of their jobs and make sure that the question asked is the right one. The debate has already been (perhaps terminally) diverted into a shouting match about the sanctity of marriage, the heinousness of divorce, mom and apple pie, but there's still an outside chance that if the right question is put, sense will prevail and those who want to can regulate their affairs civilly without interference from anyone but the Civil Court.

Somehow, I'm not holding my breath.

There's another guest-blog on the subject of divorce which I'm uploading soon, in two parts. It's worth a read.