The divorce referendum “campaign” has been a sorry sight. It couldn’t be otherwise. This “campaign” is just one symptom of a grave illness: a serious crisis of leadership among the politicians arguing for divorce.
They cannot get themselves to discuss it seriously in Parliament and decide. Labour leader Joseph Muscat cannot get himself to make divorce a plank in his party platform now or for the next election. Afraid to face the opposition of a handful of members on his benches, he has become a prisoner of his own party, not master of his house.
Cavorting with a member or two from the government side is not leadership. Leadership is getting your people from where they are to where you believe they should be. That’s the leadership so lacking in Dr Muscat who talks, talks, talks about divorce but wants us to decide for him and for politicians of his ilk.
This is the essence of this referendum. Our representatives have not discussed divorce in Parliament, not even for a quarter of an hour. The private Bill about divorce has not started its itinerary in Parliament. But we are being asked to decide for our “representatives”, whom we have elected to decide, before they have even started discussing divorce. They want us to be their representatives. Why should we? If they are unable to decide, why should we do it in their stead?
These politicians cannot get themselves to make a fundamental change in marriage. When marriage has been changed in its very essence, they want to say that “it’s the electorate, not us, that did it”. They don’t want to be seen to be responsible for husbands who will be expected to impossibly maintain two or more families. When abandoned wives lose maintenance to a second or third wife, these politicians want to be able to say that “it was the people who voted for this, not us”.
They’re afraid of no-fault divorce where a partner is granted divorce even if marriage breakdown is entirely his/her fault and divorce is being opposed by his/her partner. These politicians want to be able to say that it’s the people’s fault, not theirs, that divorce is being imposed on partners against their will.
They don’t want to be responsible for the harm children suffer with divorce. These politicians can see that if children now suffer in separation, they will suffer even worse and longer with divorce. When people start apportioning blame, these politicians want to blame “the electorate”. After a few years of divorce, parents will start seeing their children being brought up by step-parents who are neither their natural fathers nor their natural mothers. When people will inevitably start asking questions, politicians will be able to say that “it was you who voted for divorce”.
Apart from the arguments about divorce itself and its effects on children and women, particularly non-working housewives, this is also a vote about the politicians who want us to take a trip to the polls in order to decide what they have been blatantly unable to discuss seriously and decide themselves.
Pro-divorce politicians who want to shirk their responsibilities to discuss a very complex and serious change such as divorce and want us to decide for them deserve a very clear answer: no.