So, not content with acting as an arbiter of social mores on the matter of divorce and its acceptability or not in Malta (on which I agree with him), the Hon. Pullicino Orlando has metamorphosed into an expert on electoral law and practise, elevating himself to a level where he feels comfortable contradicting no less an eminence on the law than Prof. Ian Refalo, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University from which Dr Pullicino Orlando graduated himself, though not as a lawyer.

According to Dr Pullicino Orlando, refusing to delay a writ for a referendum that has been signed by the President on the basis of a motion legally proposed and carried in the House (and Mr Pullicino Orlando is familiar with the motion, having been instrumental in its proposal along with the Labour Party) is a petty reason for denying almost three thousand youths the right to have their say about divorce.

As one of the people who commented on my blog earlier on this subject pointed out, if the Electoral Commission had delayed the publication even further - publishing it after the Referendum, perhaps - even more people would have had the right to vote. In an ideal world, anyone who is eighteen up to midnight of the day before the poll should vote, but reality bites, even the Leader of the Opposition.

The fact is that a line has to be drawn for every election or poll and this line is drawn in accordance with electoral law and no amount of whining or twisting and turning or line-fudging by the chap who messed it up in the first place, Dr Joseph Muscat, will change the inexorable nature of the calendar.

And nor will said whining and squirming change the equally stark fact that legal advice has been tendered that messing around with the President's Writ is not a good thing, at all.

After all, if Dr Pullicino Orland is such an expert on electoral law, why didn't he spot the looming brick-wall and steer his best buddy (only his best buddy on this issue, of course) around it, instead of bitchin' and moanin' about it now?