Call for parties to meet on amendments to Bill

When the Nationalist Parliamentary group meets today, members would be presented with a dossier containing the amendments that were expected to be moved to the Private Member’s Bill introducing divorce, Francis Zammit Dimech told Parliament.

Speaking during the second reading of the Bill amending the Civil Code, he suggested that the Nationalist and Labour committees working on the amendments should meet to repeat the same exercise as in the case of the Rent Reform Bill and have a piece of legislation that clearly reflected what the electorate voted for in the referendum.

As it stands, the Bill did not reflect clearly what the electorate had voted for. If there was agreement on all clauses in committee stage he was prepared to vote in its favour also in third reading.

Dr Zammit Dimech said he still believed that at this stage divorce based on the principles presented in the referendum would cause more harm to Maltese society. It was everyone’s duty to have the best possible law which reflected the electors’ wishes. The referendum question had to be the gauge for MPs.

He called on the proponents to explain what they really meant when they said no fault divorce because the Bill addressed consensual and non-consensual divorce where separation contracts had been entered into and also where separation proceedings were lacking. This Bill addressed both no fault and fault divorce.

In future many would go directly for divorce and not for separation. The Bill included clauses that referred directly to fault divorce because it reproduced the articles in the Civil Code on separation based on cases of fault which referred to adultery, family violence and desertion and where the community of acquests was not divided equally between the spouses.

Dr Zammit Dimech said that alimony guarantee was a legal heresy. The electorate had voted for maintenance to be guaranteed and not for it being a right as declared by one of the proposers.

He said that after the divorce Bill became law, one had to initiate a process of strengthening all structures to safeguard the family and protect children better.