The opening salvos of the referendum run-up could not have come on a worse note. The climate has been poisoned by exasperated polarisation by who wants to politicise the issue at all costs, targeting honest citizens prepared for the first time to participate in the first person in an electoral campaign that does not have political power as its end but the future of the most cherished institution of the Maltese: the family.
The referendum is a popular consultation that should not even see politicians hogging the limelight to themselves as if they were suffering from an addiction caused by over-exposure to airtime. The climate of personal intimidation against ordinary citizens is reaching intolerable levels.
The ordinary citizen must therefore react and not be intimidated. What is at stake is the future of marriage and the climate in which our children will be brought up for the future generations. Citizens have every right for once to claim centre stage without being bullied by the all pervasive presence of the politicians.
The politicians are rushing us into a referendum. Yet, they are making a hash of it. All that the politicians and some sectors of the media seem capable of doing is to drown us citizens in a tsunami of legal, electoral technical details that even experts may find difficult to follow.
We are interested in only one thing: give us the facts on what the family in Malta needs to strengthen itself. Finally, we will decide in accordance with our conscience.
Another shame is of those who keep insisting the Church is to keep out of the debate but then do all that is possible to publicly crucify any member of the clergy who explains what marriage means to Christians. A more flagrant threat to freedom of expression where religion is concerned is difficult to find.
Then we have those old-time veterans of the Labour Party exhuming from the coffins of their party the ghosts of the interdict of the Mintoff-Gonzi days! It may perhaps escape their burdened memory that the then leader of the Malta Labour Party was heavily against divorce. Can the otherwise very respectable Labour old guard please stick to the present and preferably with more than one eye to the future?
An even worse crime against the right to information is the constant repetition of issues that have nothing to do with the family.
The classic one is to create the feeling that some are privileged by obtaining a foreign divorce when the rest of us mortals are denied this possibility. It is legal rubbish to state so.
Only this year the courts of Malta have denied applications to have a foreign divorce judgment registered in Malta because the applicants were Maltese who had not proven to the satisfaction of the court they intended to reside permanently or indefinitely in the country where they obtained their divorce. The courts held they had maintained enough links with Malta to justify the court not registering the divorce for the purposes of Maltese law!
Other arguments that prey on negative emotions are that Malta is the only country with a marriage law without divorce or that divorce is a civil right comparable to a fundamental human right or even that divorce is necessary for us to feel European. Those of us who campaigned to enter the EU had assured the Maltese we would not lose our sovereignty, particularly on matters regarding the family. It seems there are still those who have not understood what the majority of the Maltese had understood at the EU referendum! In fact, the very Charter of Rights of the EU gives a lie to all these arguments. Article 9 of the charter states: “The right to marry and the right to found a family shall be guaranteed in accordance with the national laws governing the exercise of these rights”.
The pro-divorce lobby wants to change our family law. It is therefore up to them to prove, objectively, that the present Maltese families and the families of our children will be better off with no-fault divorce instead of the present family law. To do so, they must rid themselves of negative campaigning and prove why, in their opinion, no-fault divorce is a good thing in itself.
I, for one, am still very sceptical no-fault divorce will benefit our families. However, I intend to attend and participate in my own personal capacity in debates on the matter. So must all of us voters so that we will all reach together an informed decision in the best interests of all the families of Malta and Gozo.