I have asked myself this question several times in the past few years. The last time I did so was when we were coming out of the parliament building following the vote on civil unions. Of course, we had expected a noisy crowd out there. After all, those who were there had reason to celebrate. But the hostility with which we were met was, in my opinion, not a genuine expression of democracy but rather the opposite.

This is worrying. How can one imagine such an important subject such as gay adoptions not to elicit a wide spectrum of opinions and views, especially since this subject was lumped with a piece of legislation about which there was general agreement? We had a government whose mandate did not extend beyond civil unions unilaterally deciding to go ahead with a law that equated civil unions with marriage without calling it as such? What kept it from promising gay adoption if it believed in it? Was it afraid that such a pledge would have cost them a chunk of the electorate? So if it hid its plans from the electorate in order not to lose votes wasn’t the Opposition right in criticising the government for forging ahead instead of listening and discussing? And what did the Labour parliamentary group find so strange in our abstention on the third reading? By any chance, were they expecting us to be divided so that they could rule supreme as they did when we had become victims of treason?

And what did Labour find so strange in Dr Lawrence Gonzi’s opinion piece in another newspaper and the clarification of what he had said when he was premier of this country? Didn’t he have a right to express his views without having the party in government and its head come out savagely against him?

In an age when we have so many opportunities to express ourselves unhindered and uncensored, it has become increasingly obvious that there are those who believe that once they cannot stop anyone from speaking freely, they can bully people into silence. As the Opposition, we are inundated with complaints from various individuals and non-governmental organisations that wish to speak out about the way this government is managing this country but fear that if they do so they will suffer the consequences. This did not happen under Nationalist administrations where freedom of expression and association was always respected irrespective of whether one agreed with an opinion or not. Nationalist politicians came under fire in TV programmes on the national station and in other media without any consequences for those involved. Today, it is more than obvious that those involved in these programmes have been completely silenced.

Freedom and liberty has come at a great expense to this country. Giving them up simply because there is a bullish party in government who thinks that it can do whatever it wants simply because it has won an election, is stupid. We should never give up unless we have decided that it’s worth exchanging our freedom with favours offered by this shameless government.

 

Charlò Bonnici is Opposition Spokesperson for Sustainable Development, the Environment and Climate Change