The Prime Minister has no choice but to vote Yes on Divorce in Parliament, unless he wants his position to become untenable, Joseph Muscat said this morning.
Speaking at a political conference in Paola, Dr Muscat said Lawrence Gonzi was not an ordinary MP. He was the prime minister and the man who proposed the holding of the referendum.
Therefore, if he wished to remain in office, if he wanted his position to remain tenable, he had no choice but to vote according to the wishes of the people, and vote Yes.
Earlier, Dr Muscat said the Prime Minister was not reading the signs of the times and he had led the PN into a corner, throwing it back 30 years and making it a confessional party which imposed its beliefs on others.
In contrast, he said, the PL was the party of tolerance, respect and compassion, the party of everyone.
Dr Muscat said that Dr Gonzi had forced the PN to take a stand against divorce. He had landed himself and the party in an untenable position
The current situation would be comical were it not tragic, in that while the PN had taken a position against divorce, it was saying it would allow its MPs to vote Yes or No in Parliament.
The PL had no problem in its position, Dr Muscat said. He felt the will of the people should be respected and MPs should vote Yes or abstain.
Others could vote no, but they had to shoulder their own responsibility.
The PN, however, was divided into three - those who would vote Yes, those who would vote No and those who would abstain. This reflected inconsistency and lack of direction that was also seen in other sections of the country not least in the social, environmental and economic sectors where the left hand did not know what the right was doing.
The PN, he said, needed to change its confessional policy and embrace new policies of freedom and tolerance.
The PN needed to update itself to reality, like the Labour Party had done after the EU referendum.
It was a difficult process which was now bearing fruit.
The PN was at a crossroad. It could bury its head in the sand and keep its current policy, or it could wake up to reality and adapt the same position of Labour.
Should the PN change nothing, it would be in an anachronistic position, as Labour would have been had it not changed its EU policy after the 2003 election.
The Prime Minister's position could not be understood, Dr Muscat said. He was saying that one needed to respect the minority, which was 14,000 fewer than the majority. However, in the past few years, Dr Gonzi had not shown similar regard for the much narrower minority after the last general elections.
He was confident, Dr Muscat said, that Labour MPs would vote freely, responsibly and according to their conscience in Parliament.
However Lawrence Gonzi was not an ordinary MP. He was the prime minister and the man who proposed the holding of the referendum.
Therefore, if he wished to remain in office, if he wanted his position to remain tenable, he had no choice but to vote according to the wishes of the people, and vote Yes.