The highest court of the country, the Constitutional Court of Appeal, has ruled in favour of the decision of the Film and Stage Classification Board to ban the showing of the play Stitching. The Constitutional Court has thus confirmed the decision given by the Civil Court in 2010.

The decision is almost academic since the legal system prevailing at the time of the Stitching decision has now been changed for a system of self-regulation. But the controversy will go on … and on.

I have not as yet read the sentence of our Constitutional Court not a decent summary of it since the media have decided that it was more news worthy to give extensive coverage to the press release of Unifaun, the company responsible for the production of the play, than to the sentence of the Court. My comments will thus concentrate on other aspects of the debate.

My first comment is about the decision of the Board led by Ms Therese Friggieri. That members of the Board had decided against the showing of the play as, in their estimation, the showing would have contravened Maltese laws. Today we have the decision of two courts confirming the decision of Ms Friggieri. This shows that the decision of the Board was not taken lightly or capriciously. Their decision had a valid legal basis. This is no surprise. The Board always acted with prudence so much so that it only banned one play in ten years.

Quite naturally one can disagree with the decision of the Board, now buttressed by the Court, but the accusation of heavy handedness by the Board is totally out of place.

One can disagree with the decisions of both Courts. Our system is such that it allows a further appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. This is right and fitting. What is neither right nor fitting are the demeaning and totally uninformed comments made by several who although they have not read the sentence of the Court feel that they can pontificate about it. (As an aside I note that I only wrote about the “Republic of Mellieha” after reading the Court sentence on the subject.)

I just pick some examples of the type of comments I am referring to.

The following was the comment by a certain Franco Attard Trevisan: “Such a shameful decision by the court that not even the judge's name has been published in the article!” It seems that this guy does not know that the Constitutional Court of Appeal is made up of three judges and that the sentence is public information.

The Church also came in for an unfair share of bashing. A luminary by the name of Stefan Limongello blamed the Church for the Court’s decision. “Back to the Future, not that I do not like it or hate it. One must remember that here the Church is very much full of agents.” While a certain Duncan Scerri cynically welcomed “the Roman Apostolic Republic of Maltanistan. Please set your watches back 500 years.”

I had read the script of Stiching and it is only fair to note that there are no masturbation scenes in the script as was mistakenly stated by a certain M Borg.

Let us disagree and debate. That’s healthy. But using insulting remarks and uninformed comments shows a lack of respect for the opinion of others and for an informed debate.