The Prime Minister and the referendum

The truth must be said and the facts brought out in the open. Lawrence Gonzi will go down in modern history as the first leader of a major party to fully recognise an unfavourable result at a referendum.

In the integration referendum, the then leader of the Nationalist Party, George Borg Olivier, had requested abstention from his voters on Dom Mintoff’s referendum and had declared he would never accept integration. The Labour leader returned the compliment by not recognising the result of the independence referendum called by Prime Minister Borg Olivier on the Constitution of independent Malta.

In 1974, Prime Minister Mintoff categorically resisted every call for a referendum by Dr Borg Olivier on the introduction of the republic despite having suspended the supreme Constitution for 48 hours until the necessary constitutional amendments be passed, if need be by an absolute majority instead of the required two-thirds majority.

Few will recall that, in 1974, both parties ended by agreeing to the eccentric idea of allowing the party that won the 1977 election to remove all the so-called republic amendments by simple majority of Parliament even though they had been entrenched at the two-thirds level.

What politicians do to deny the people’s right to a referendum!

The cherry on the cake on referenda must go to Labour leader Alfred Sant who claimed his No to EU campaign had won the referendum despite the clear Yes victory by an absolute majority. He claimed so because he added those who abstained or annulled their vote to the No vote. Had the same measure been applied to the divorce referendum, the No vote should have won!

Dr Sant’s non-recognition of the EU result led Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami to call an election which had confirmed the Yes result by the absolute majority of the electorate.

What party leaders do when confronted by an unfavourable referendum result!

Finally, we have a historical throwback to 1974 when President Emeritus Fenech Adami, who had played a major role in the negotiations on the republic amendments, revived the idea of an election deciding finally a referendum matter by suggesting the divorce issue be decided finally when the country next goes to the polls.

All this leads us to the present leader of the Nationalist Party. Dr Gonzi was the first political leader to propose the referendum immediately after Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando presented the Private Member’s Bill. Not only, Dr Gonzi wasted no time in allowing a free vote to Nationalist MPs on divorce.

He also proposed the electorate be given the chance to vote in the full knowledge of the final version of the divorce Bill after it be approved by the House, including the approval of the technical elements of the Bill after the so-called committee stage, a proposal on which, to boot, he also allowed a free vote.

The Prime Minister’s compliment to the intelligence and the right to be informed of the electorate was not returned by the leader of the Labour Party who obliged his MPs to vote against and, thereby, forcing Labour No-MPs to also vote against. The implications for the latter MPs were quite considerable because they were not given the chance to attempt to remove the no-fault divorce from the Private Member’s Bill before the referendum was called.

If all this were not enough, Dr Gonzi declared that the referendum result would be respected within hours from the confirmation of the Yes result.

All this throws the spotlight on Labour. Why is it so difficult for the opposition to understand the obvious democratic and constitutional truth? Dr Gonzi as Prime Minister and the person who was voted in power by the electorate at the last election assumed the institutional responsibility to ensure that what the voters wanted they got independently of his personal views on divorce.

Having ascertained what all of Malta knew, except for the opposition that is, namely that at the vote to be taken on the second reading of the divorce Bill there were enough MPs from both parties in favour, having declared their intention in advance, meant that Dr Gonzi had seen to his duties as Prime Minister. It only remained for Dr Gonzi the MP on an equal basis of all the other individual MPs to vote according to his personal conscience in the manner he had allowed his MPs to do.

Therefore, would anyone still doubt that the opposition’s fuss on Dr Gonzi’s no vote proves that divorce has become their proverbial Trojan Horse to win the next elections?