Ah, Hamlet, you should be living at this hour. You would find comfort in the certainty that you’re not alone in your indecision.

Our political class, save for the Alternattiva Demokratika minnows in it, are proving that – with their approach to the little old matter of whether our civil society should have access to the ancient civil arrangement of ending a civil marriage contract when affairs between the two parties become too uncivil.

The giants in the political class, what with one mistake and another, have turned what should be a choice to be resorted to by minorities of two, into an overarching decision by the majority of the electorate.

Divorce legislation is absolutely of no consequence to the majority of married couples who remain blissfully in love or who have, more likely, learned how to remain bound to each other, in sickness and in health, through good and bad times.

Who are blessed with being able to forgive each other human trespasses they might commit, in the knowledge that such weaknesses can be pitfalls for both sides.

Who are in short blessed with the belief that marriage essentially means taking the rough with the smooth.

To those in this broad category can be added others in marriages within which passion has died, wooden silence has taken over, but who have no wish to embark on any new adventure, not least since there is no certainty that they would not end up in the same state.

The majority of our people, I hazard to opine, do not need now, nor in future, legislation which permits them to divorce by terminating the civil marriage contract.

To them it does not matter a hoot that, together with Philippines, we are the only country that does not include divorce provisions in its legislation.

Nor does it matter to them, other than through Christian or at least civilised concern for our fellow citizens, that marriage breakdowns are on the increase, that a considerable number of couples are preferring to cohabit without entering into a civil or religious marriage.

Those who are in the large category of couples do not need divorce legislation, have every right to be against it.

Similarly, they have no right to arrogate to themselves the power of imposing their will on those who live in the reality of broken marriages, or in the other reality of having moved on from them into partnerships which they cannot bind with a new civil contract because the facility does not exist in Malta.

There are those in these two categories who would not remarry, even if that were made possible through the introduction of divorce legislation, or because they are sufficiently well off to find and finance a way to be divorced abroad.

Similarly, there are others who desperately wish they could start afresh in a new marriage. They include sincere Catholics who have no desire to defy the Church or her teachings but hope that a merciful God will understand them and will not bar them from His love when He comes to judge them, as is His right and no one else’s.

They also include some who have never believed in religion or who have given up believing. That they have a terrible gap in their lives should be for them alone to consider.

As it should also be for them alone to want to go on to remarry, once their prior marriage has irretrievably failed. They have their reality to live and it should be up to them to decide how they live it.

Unfortunately our divorce-legislation discussion has never had much use for the thinking and approach I humbly outline above. Like some in Communist societies there are those who feel that the majority who do not need or want divorce have a right to impose themselves on the minority who do.

To them the concept of the tyranny of the majority is of no consequence. They positively want to tyrannise the minority, rather than letting it go its own way, as they want to go theirs.

The rights of children are invoked, as if children are not already affected by ongoing marriage breakdown, actual failure and separations, as well as cohabitation where new partnerships are formed.

The debate on divorce legislation, unwisely hijacked by a very premature move by JeffreyPullicino Orlando, ended up in a debate on the right of the electorate to be consulted.

As a result, after much spinning and U-turns, we shall probably get a consultative referendum. The result, I hazard to predict, will be a no-to-divorce-legislation majority.

Those who, because of their reality and no one else’s, have suffered marriage failure and wish to enter into a new bond through civil marriage will not be able to do so. Not in Malta.

Not for quite a few more years until the political class rethinks the issue in more democratic: the right of minorities, and more humane: not letting others stew in their cruel realities, terms – and finally decides that those who want the civil right to remarry should have it, whatever others might think.

After much to-be-or-not-to-be, there will be a consultative referendum. It will be far from the end of the affair. This stage is likely to end in ironic preening that the No majority has spoken. Thereby, the trend of marriage failures will not be halted. Nor will the despair of those who want to rebuild away from them be eased.

Instead, anger and resentment will grow. At the political class. And, if the Church is foolish enough to get involved, directly or indirectly, at her as well.

Given the choice, I doubt that Hamlet would wish to be living at this hour.