Whether you loved it or hated it, whether you were repelled by it or embraced it, these last weeks of campaigning in the lead up to yesterday’s D-Day has been quite unlike anything the country has seen to date.

And it is, by any stretch of the imagination and regardless of the results this afternoon, far from over.

Over the last weeks, new forces within the country – conservative and liberal alike - that have lied mostly latent for a long time, have been jolted into action. People, some to the surprise of many, have declared themselves on the divorce issue in way or another. Some declarations could very well have been expected, while others have shocked.

Religious-oriented declarations from certain individuals that we have heard over the course of the campaign have been all the more surprising when considering the fact that the issue, as we have argued until we turned blue in the face, is not a religious one.

The conservative and religious factions in the country have made themselves heard over the last weeks perhaps like never before. But that was not so much of a surprise. The country has had a conservative government for over two decades and the Maltese people are also conservative and religious in its outlook, for all intents and purposes.

But what has been more interesting over the last weeks has been the very perceptible rise of the country’s liberal faction, from both sides of the country’s political duopoly. So many people have come out of the woodwork thanks to the issue, and here there have been surprises too.

We had always argued that this issue should never have been solved, if a solution is in fact what we will have this afternoon with the results, through a referendum. We have always argued that this was a matter for the country’s elected parliamentarians to deal with, and that that stance has not changed one iota. Hopefully, they will be forced to deal with it by the end of this year. If not then, it will certainly be brought to the fore in legislatures to come.

But now that the campaign has been waged, there just might be a silver lining those dark clouds that have been looming over the electorate. That silver lining is the prospect of a new level of social and political discourse for the country, a real ongoing discourse about values and ideologies that transcend those political lines that have been etched in stone for so many decades but which, through the divorce debate, have been eroded, even if only ever so slightly.

And now, if there was ever a time in recent memory, is the time for a truly liberal movement to rise up. Whether it does so or not or whether that movement would be led by an already established political party is anybody’s guess at the moment but if it is to do so, it must strike while the iron is hot.

As is observed elsewhere in this section, the divorce issue is not an issue that will go away, not for a long, long time and as is also astutely observed, ‘There’ll (also) be hell to pay’.

And whatever the result of today’s vote, the repercussions will be far reaching indeed. It could very well be that future elections will no longer be fought across the traditional Nationalist-Labour demarcation line, but rather on issues.

This, it has to be agreed, would be a most welcome development in Maltese politics. And for this reason alone, divorce or no divorce, kudos must be extended to those responsible for tabling the divorce bill.

They have not only finally brought to the surface one of the country’s most important issues, but they could very well have forever changed the country’s political and social tone, and it’s level of discourse, the paltry level of which we have seen over recent weeks aside.

The tide could indeed be turning, and turning for the better, but much will depend on what emerges in the aftermath of today’s results.