Let me get two facts out of the way. I am in favour of divorce and I find it embarrassing that the two parties represented in Parliament are still pussyfooting around the issue, let alone taking a position on it. Secondly, this article has nothing to do with the pros of cons of divorce. It addresses a single question: should divorce become the law of the land in this legislature on the wings on a bill submitted by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando?

In a democracy, citizens' wishes are expressed in parliament through the members elected and the party they belong to. 'The people' did not vote for the introduction of divorce during this legislature. Neither of the two major parties proposed it in their manifesto. The one which did, AD, suffered an electoral implosion.

Clearly, unless Parliament decides to submit the issue to a national referendum - a move with its own complications and institutional dilemmas - introducing divorce in this legislature violates a cardinal democratic principle: that Parliament is the expression of the voters' will.

Of course, parliamentary democracy caters for Private Members' Bills. But these should be infrequent, narrow detours, and still feed back into the main legislative highway. More importantly, they are not meant to enact legislation on fundamental national issues.

Quaint as it might sound for an EU country in 2010, divorce is a national issue here. It is therefore only the government's prerogative to deal with it in Parliament. And as far as I know, two years ago voters elected the PN to govern, not Pullicino Orlando.

Then there is the question of the function of a political party. It transpires that Pullicino Orlando concocted his divorce bill and tabled it in Parliament as a lone ranger. His party leader and prime minister publicly embarrassingly admitted he knew nothing about it.

Had Pullicino Orlando been an independent MP elected on his own steam, his behaviour would have been perfectly acceptable. But he is not. He ran on the PN ticket and is a member of the PN's parliamentary group. In this light, he has no business forcing the Prime Minister's or the party leader's hand on an issue of national importance such as divorce. The wiser and perhaps more effective course for him would have been to push the PN, within as well as outside its structures, to stop pretending that the pink elephant sitting in the middle of the room - the debate on divorce - does not exist.

For a decade-and-a-half now, both the PN and the PL have tried to get themselves off the electorally treacherous divorce hook by repeating the same, increasingly irritating, mantra. Let's "stimulate" debate, they chant. Yet both have preferred the comfort of the mantra to the electoral danger of being the stimulators themselves.

I was very surprised that Gonzi stuck to this position even after Pullicino Orlando's surprise move. It will stimulate debate, he repeated. Not quite. Parliament should enact laws following a debate rooted in previously thought-out party positions. The highest institution in the land is not a national think tank. It should not be hijacked to do what the two parties lacked the courage to do through the proper channels - party conferences, parliamentary and executive group meetings.

So what has this divorce summer splash left us with? Just a stickier mess at the pinnacle of both political camps. On one side there remains Joseph Muscat promising that as prime minister he would introduce a Private Member's Bill and give a free vote to his fellow MPs. If Muscat becomes prime minister, his job would be to govern, not chair a debating society which used to be called Parliament. Not to mention the fact that if his divorce bill fails to pass, he would have to resign and instantly dissolve his government. What a painful take two that would be.

On the other side there is Gonzi now waddling in a similar mess. In one sentence he says he wants an open debate on Pullicino Orlando's divorce motion and in the next that he is "personally" against divorce. A prime minister has no right to 'personal' opinions on national issues. That he expressed his view on divorce in so crystalline a manner, will mean that the PN's internal debate will most likely be a chimera.

I see only one way out of this institutional mess. This silliness about a parliamentary debate on a Private Member's motion on divorce in this legislature should cease. Both parties need to go back to their respective tents and not emerge before they have hammered out a coherent position. Then they should put that position in their electoral manifesto. And let the people decide.