The trouble with writing every other week is that everyone else steals your thunder and gets there before you do. So all the bright ideas you imagined were yours alone, suddenly seem borrowed, stolen or very tired by the time they finally make it to print.

You’d think there’d be enough to go around without 16 columnists all running the same man down. And yet everyone seems to gravitate toward the same bone of contention.

Which is odd, because as someone told me only recently, why would anyone, let alone everyone, care what Eddie Fenech Adami thinks or has to say? He ought to be as relevant and effective as air conditioning in the desert.

He’s past his political expiry date, and not just by a fortnight, like my column ideas or the carton of milk that is sitting in my refrigerator.

He increasingly comes across like his arch-nemesis Dom Mintoff, with the difference that, although in his heyday Mintoff definitely possessed a superiority complex, occasionally believing himself to be the Almighty, he did not speak with the moral superiority of someone convinced he draws authority directly from Jesus Christ.

When Fenech Adami tells us that MPs should stymie divorce law and vote against its introduction, I am immediately transported to 1998, to a time when Mintoff played parliamentary truant and voted against the proposed Cottonera project. True, the circumstances were different and not just because Mintoff, unlike the former President, was still an MP.

This time around Fenech Adami may not be able to bring about the government’s undoing; yet as long as he persists in saying that the only way forward is for MPs to vote conscientiously against divorce, he is not doing Gonzi PN any favours.

Although both men are supposedly singing from the same hymn book, my guess is that Fenech Adami is undermining Gonzi’s leadership and making his political life miserable and very uncomfortable.

Fenech Adami’s words still carry some weight, and he knows it. This makes his current stance even more suspect and dangerous. Mintoff had the same sort of power although I suspect the former President imagines his influence is still relevant and far-reaching.

You see, the thing about Fenech Adami is that his legacy involves a long list of credentials. He’s Malta’s ‘redeemer’, apart from being our nice guy and bonus paterfamilias.

Take Alfred Sant – he was disconcertingly honest, to a fault perhaps. He would have readily admitted to being atheist, if indeed that were the case. Mintoff on the other hand, was always Malta’s loosest canon and definitely not the churchy type.

You see, although he stopped short of saying it in so many words, Fenech Adami intimated that MPs who do not vote against divorce do not believe in Christ. I find that sort of sophistry very disturbing. But even if that were the case, it should not matter.

If you read the full interview, one thing is immediately clear – Fenech Adami believes his brand of morality is the incontrovertible, absolute truth. His is a ‘Master Morality,’ if you like.

According to him, divorce should not be decided on the principle of democratic majorities but on what is morally right. And of course, he alone gets to determines what constitutes moral righteousness.

It’s the sort of terrifying tyrannical reasoning which screams ‘checks and balances’ and warrants complete separation of powers. The rule of law and democracy, from the bill of rights to popular sovereignty to trials by jury, exist precisely to protect the vital and fundamental rights of citizens from out-of-control governments, which chip away at and attempt to transfer more and more power and control unto themselves.

We live in a democracy because we want to say ‘no’ to oppression – political or moral. Because people in government tend to go on extended power trips at times, and may wake up one day and decide that condoms are morally wrong, or that extramarital sex or homosexuality should be criminalised.

Now, when you consider that many MPs are lawyers, you can’t help wonder how we got ourselves into this predicament. You see, there’s an indignant, smell-under-the-nose sort of curiosity and shame that surrounds the legal profession, which lawyers oppose fiercely.

It is fashionable for outsiders to frown upon lawyers who defend clients who are obviously guilty. Any lawyer worth his salt would be insulted at the suggestion that he should to do otherwise.

Lawyers are neither legally obliged nor morally expected to enter into the merits of innocence or guilt. The inference that it is morally wrong for a lawyer to defend a client he knows is guilty, is completely at odds with the spirit and rule of law.

There is no place in the courtroom for a lawyer who can’t fold his conscience neatly at night due to some moral crisis of conscience provoked by his client’s guilt. The presumption of innocence has to override a lawyer’s personal convictions and beliefs.

Similarly, a judge has to respect the verdict handed down by the jury, even if he privately disagrees with it. By doing so, he is neither compromising his conscience nor condoning the charge in question.

The courtroom is simply not big enough for legalities, procedure, the jury, their consciences and the personal feelings of lawyers or presiding judges. The exact same concept applies directly to Parliament and MPs.

Ironically, the last and only time I recall Fenech Adami getting personal was when he completely discredited the jury system on account of a 2004 jury verdict which didn’t pan out the way he wanted it to. Most of us put that down to excessive emotional involvement and chose not to sabotage his democratic judgment then.

This time around, I fear his moral overzealousness may be writing cheques Gonzi PN really can’t afford to cash or honour.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com