Liquorice allsorts and divorce

Every week I feel I cannot possibly write about divorce yet again and, yet, I do. The reason I feel constrained to do so is simple. Should not divorce become law in Malta this time round, all other social issues, which like divorce are even remotely controversial, like IVF, for instance, will be forever shelved. That is unacceptable, I hear you say. But that is precisely what is going to happen.

As I write, there seems to be some sort of vague consensus between the two parties about a referendum. I am not, and never was, in favour of a referendum for two very simple reasons: one, that I have always maintained that parliamentarians would be abrogating their responsibilities and, two, that in this way the majority, whether they are Nationalist or Labour supporters, would be imposing their will on a minority. Ergo, the concept of a referendum in this context is unjust, pure and simple.

Involving the Church in the issue is also unjust. The Church is being forced to take a position as if it were a state within a state or even worse, a political party. It has over the past few months been blamed by the extremists for blocking divorce. If one forgets the ill-advised declarations of the Pro Vicar and Judicial Vicar that were subsequently modified, the Church in fact has taken an exemplary back seat position.

Significantly, I am sure you will not have failed to notice that, curiously, the “Catholics” breathing fire and brimstone are not priests. There has in fact been a rather balanced official message given out by the Church, which is far more liberal than expected.

For one thing the Pro Vicar even went as far as to state that one could vote in favour of divorce and confess it afterwards if one felt that doing so were a sin. While the question of sin per se is subjective that is a colossal loophole if I ever saw one.

This brings me to the nauseating show of logical incompetence on Bondiplus. Very unwisely, the Nationalist Party has taken an official stand against the introduction of divorce, yet, has, possibly because of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, been forced to give its MPs a free vote in Parliament. A political party cannot take an official stand and then tell its elected MPs they can do what they like. It makes no sense, so why take a stand in the first place?

What happened last week on Bondiplus was that the PN spokesmen, knowing full well their party stood on slippery ground and had made the most awful boo-boo, were trying their damndest to force the Labour Party to do the same. The show was appalling.

This issue should never have been politicised. By stating officially that it is against divorce, the PN has alienated a good-sized section of its supporters of a more liberal disposition than the Prime Minister and should, hypothetically, the PL decide to state it is officially in favour of divorce, it, in turn, will be alienating a good-sized section of its supporters of a more conservative disposition than the Leader of the Opposition. Could I be clearer?

Parties are made up of liquorice allsorts and, therefore, neither party should take a “one-size-fits-all” position. That is called political suicide. In the last eight months we have had sheer mayhem. We have talked of nothing else. People argue about divorce in the streets, in cafés, restaurants and bars as if this were the be all and end all of our existence when it really isn’t.

If one takes a detached and sober view of it, the meaning of divorce in our society, fraught as it is with so many threats that are much worse and far more damaging, one realises that what is being proposed is a very sober procedure that, far from being the free-for-all depicted by the “anti” pundits, will only be availed of in relatively extreme cases. So difficult and onerous are its terms that most people living outside of the charmed circle of mother, father and two point four children will not opt for it and people will simply go on “living in sin” as before, which is possibly why the PN seems to be so desperate to enact cohabitation laws and not divorce. Maybe Lawrence Gonzi is being far more pragmatic than we think.

Whither Malta? Where do we go from here? It is very obvious that, irrespective of how the referendum question will be put, divorce is doomed this time round. It will not pass. That is obvious. It was obvious from the moment Dr Pullicino Orlando proposed it before the summer recess. I had frankly thought the Prime Minister had pulled off a Machiavellian coup and had pulled the carpet from under the feet of the Leader of the Opposition by having a controversial MP do precisely what Joseph Muscat had promised to do when Prime Minister! When it became patently obvious Dr Pullicino Orlando had acted of his own accord I knew that, boy oh boy, were we in for trouble.

Instead of making a silk purse out a sow’s ear the government has practically paralysed the country because of something that should have been introduced into our codex as a matter of course without all this ridiculous fuss and bother.

kzt@onvol.net