Nationalist MP and pro-divorce campaigner Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando yesterday announced he was planning to get a divorce from the UK if the upcoming referendum was unsuccessful.

He said his daughter studied in the UK and lived in a flat he paid for, meaning he could easily register the place as his own residence and apply for divorce almost immediately online. “I ask our legislators: Is this fair on those who can’t do the same?”

He was speaking during a pub-lic discussion on divorce at Marsaxlokk.

A 35-year-old man who said his marriage was annulled by the Church had just heckled the head of the pro-divorce lobby, Deborah Schembri, asking her why she thought she could dissolve a union between a couple and God.

Dr Schembri told him divorce would not affect Catholic marriage but civil marriage, which was a contract between a couple and a marriage registrar. Not all Maltese nationals were Catholics and the state should legislate for everyone, she said.

Dr Schembri added that divorce was already recognised as a civil right for a section of the Maltese people who, like Dr Pullicino Orlando, could access divorce from abroad, which was recognised in Malta. Malta was the only country in the world that recognised foreign divorce judgments but did not allow couples to seek divorce in the comfort of their own country.

She said it did not make sense to disallow couples from doing “the right thing” and get married, forcing them to cohabit instead.

Marking International Family Day, she said all families should be celebrated and given the chance to enter into the responsibilities of marriage. Studies showed cohabitation gave less stability and sense of belonging to the couple and the children involved.

Dr Schembri said such couples were given incentives to register their children as having an unknown father, something that scarred the children throughout their lives.

She said the anti-divorce camp was trying to scare people into thinking divorce would bring about a new form of poverty. In fact, it would ensure maintenance rights and equality between the children of the first family, where the marriage broke down, and the second one.

If one of the spouses owed maintenance but did not pay, the other spouse could seek his/her rights through the criminal and civil courts. “If a man fails to pay maintenance he may be sent to jail but he would still owe maintenance even for every day he spends in jail.”

Responding to claims that the legislation would introduce a divorce mentality in Malta, she said the mentality was a “separatist” one, allowing anyone to walk out on their marriage for no reason any given day. Divorce, she said, was the last step of the process after all matters of fault and maintenance were decided upon in court.

Dr Schembri criticised Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi’s claims that people had to decide between permanent marriage and marriages that last four years. Divorce, she said, was “the other side of the cohabitation coin” not of happy families.

She warned that the finished but unpublished draft law on cohabitation would not give protection to people in a broken marriage. By law, separated people must keep their vow of fidelity, which meant the state would not be able to register another relationship.

“It is cohabitation without divorce that will cause chaos,” she said, adding that, by keeping the draft law secret, the anti-divorce camp were being allowed to deceive people into thinking they would be protected through cohabitation.