The second reading of the divorce Bill was approved by 44 votes. The Bill will have the final vote in the third reading today, when it would have passed from all stages in Parliament.
From then on the focus and all attention would be on the President of Malta who will have to give his assent so that the divorce Bill would becomes law.
There is a saying that “history repeats itself”.
King Albert Charles Baudouin of Belgium was a devout Roman Catholic, through the influence of Leo Cardinal Suenens. In 1990, when a law submitted by Roger Lallemand and Lucienne Herman-Michielsens, liberalising Belgium’s abortion laws, was approved by Parliament, he refused to give royal assent to the Bill. This was unprecedented; although Baudoin was nominally Belgium’s chief executive, royal assent had long been a formality (as is the case in most constitutional and popular monarchies). However, due to his religious convictions, Baudouin asked the government to declare him temporarily unable to reign so that he could avoid signing the measure into law. The government under Wilfried Martens complied with his request on April 4, 1990.
According to the provisions of the Belgian Constitution, in the event the King is temporarily unable to reign, the government as a whole fulfills the role of head of state. All members of the government signed the Bill, and the next day (April 5, 1990) the government declared that Baudouin was capable of reigning again.
On the day the King stood up to be counted.
Knowing the President from what he publicly declares and states, he would be in a dilemma what to do as a Catholic President and head of state of Malta.
In his welcoming speech to Pope Benedict XVI on April 17, 2010 , the President addressed His Holiness with these words:
“Holy Father, we are proud as a nation to have inherited a Christian heritage which is at the core of our historical identity, even though we are not a confessional state. We too are experiencing, like all the rest of Europe, the phenomenon of multiculturalism, but this does not mean that we have to renounce to the beliefs which are our own. We still cherish a code of values, nourished by our faith, such as the cardinal value of marriage and the family. We acknowledge that our Maltese family is undergoing rapid social changes and challenges, greatly influenced by current Western-world lifestyles and the ever-increasing secularisation of the Maltese society. But the majority of our people still believe in monogamous marriage, based on the relationship between a man and a woman, open to the procreation of children, and consequently to the formation of a family as the bedrock of our nation.”
Reading all the above my thoughts go to today’s aftermath. Will His Excellency bow to Parliament, following the May 28 referendum, to give assent so that the divorce Bill will become law? Whatever the outcome will be, people from all corners of the world would have a right to judge the real outcome.
Article 2 (1) of the Constitution of Malta states: (1) The religion of Malta is the Roman Catholic Apostolic.
I humbly understand that the head of state is obliged to follow all that the Catholic faith declares vis- à-vis this improtant clause.
We expect an honourable decision.