Opposition spokesman on justice Josè Herrera told Parliament on Monday that a no vote on the Divorce Bill would be a clear vote against democratic principles. He said that in a democracy, the minority had to be respected but the majority’s will had to be carried out.
He referred to the speech by former Health Minister Louis Deguara who had said he would vote against the Bill because he wanted to be the representative of the 47 per cent minority who, in the referendum, had voted against divorce. Dr Herrera insisted this reasoning was illogical and went against democracy. The turnout of voters was substantial enough to make the result valid.
The argument that the referendum was not binding was invalid. A consultative referendum gave voice to the people so that Parliament could then legislate accordingly.
Malta was a secular country and even though the Church carried out its mission in such a state, the issue of moral conscience had been already been weighed by the people when they voted. Parliament had now a political duty to respect the people’s will.
The Labour MP said that should the electorate decide in favour of a principle which he himself could not morally accept, like abortion, he would be ready to resign. It was simply not acceptable to vote against the people’s will.
Turning to the technicalities of the Bill, Dr Herrera said that the opposition wanted this to reflect the referendum question. The actual Bill presented did reflect this but there were some minor points which could be improved.
The Bill proposed a no-fault divorce. However, certain clauses ensured that the person at fault would be at a disadvantage when it came to maintaining children and the right to live in the marital residence. Sometimes, the blame could not fall on any one of the partners since the marriage breakdown might have been due to incompatibility and the decision to divorce would be mutual. The Bill did reflect a divorce which could be either based on consent or litigation.
One mistake in the Bill was that it referred to a “decree” when in cases of litigation this was technically referred to as a “sentence”.
The Bill reflected the decisions taken during separation. Dr Herrera said that a clause should be inserted to be able to alter such decisions when it came to divorce, if need be.
There were other clauses which needed to be revised. Some were already present in the civil code and thus could be simplified to include divorce in order to avoid repetition.
He said the owner of the property in which the other party and the children lived should not be liable to provide alternative accommodation to the other party once the children grew up, provided that the owner himself was not to blame for the divorce.
Dr Herrera said he believed that the Bill reflected the referendum question but it needed some fine tuning. It was now up to Parliament to do this.