It was nothing short of risible to learn the Nationalist Party is now insisting the government has a mandate to introduce cohabitation legislation because this was “specifically mentioned” in the President’s speech in May 2008.

It might have been on Lawrence Gonzi’s mind during the 2008 election campaign but he did not even have the political strength to drop a hint about it throughout the campaign proper out of fear of losing any precious votes. The fact that the PN had actually included a proposal for cohabitation in the 1998 manifesto by Eddie Fenech Adami holds no water. Since then it has been droppped and not mentioned at all.

If anything, the feeble excuse about the President’s speech merely goes to prove that the whole issue of an electoral mandate is just an excuse by the Gonzi Administration to try and quash any serious attempts to help push the divorce issue forward.

The PN have announced that they will be giving a free vote in Parliament on the issue. No matter how loaded the dice might be to the run-up of the vote proper. I wonder how Dr Fenech Adami must have felt about this PN U-turn when he took such a fundamentalist stand on the issue in recent weeks and even attacked the mere notion of a referendum since this was, according to him, an issue linked to “values”.

Although I have my personal reservations about certain details of the Private Members’ Bill recently tabled, to accuse its proponents of having put forward a “quick fix” divorce procedure is an insult to one’s intelligence.

But then it seems that anyway we are in for a number of surprises. Particularly now that we have recently seen jumping on the anti-divorce bandwagon eminent Cabinet members who until some months ago had claimed that divorce was an almost foregone conclusion and an evolutionary process one could hardly block at all.

One thing seems certain – between now and the referendum key socio-economic issues that are affecting the ordinary man in the street’s quality of life are conveniently expected to be put on the slow burner.

So in the long run, although this divorce issue is definitely something the PN would have loved to have avoided, they might be able to draw some solace from it, particularly as the so-called post recessionary blues kick in.