Our country has to decide on introducing a divorce law immediately. As the situation stands, citizens and residents can decide to go and get married in any EU member state so that in the eventuality of the divorce necessity arising, it will not be that difficult for such individuals to obtain it.

Minister Austin Gatt, in a June 2008 parliamentary statement, officially announced that a number of Maltese had actually successfully registered in Malta a divorce they obtained from some EU country. The Public Registry in fact confirmed this upon enquiries being made, citing that if a divorcee applies for registration with an authenticated copy of the judgement plus a certificate in accordance with the European Union Council Regulation (EC) No. 2201 / 2003 of November 27, 2003 – Article 39, then that apparently is sufficient for a foreign divorce decision to be formally recognised by our state.

Our Prime Minister owes a mature and objective explanation to the people as to what extent this statement by Minister Gatt has affected the interpretation of Article 33 of the Marriage Act relating to recognition and local registration of foreign divorce decisions.

The issue of divorce has its roots deeply embedded in the political-religious history of these islands. These roots relate to a well-devised political strategy between the Catholic Curia and the Nationalist Party with the blessings of the British government in the run-up to our independence over 44 years ago. I personally have been campaigning for the introduction of a divorce law for nearly 30 years. However, this is not a matter for personalities but for affected and inflicted individuals who are rightfully demanding that divorce should be immediately introduced locally.

Whatever persons who have been privileged with power personally believe about divorce is not the concern of the individuals in need for their own reasons to obtain a divorce. The persons from the Catholic Curia have interests to protect and have no right to poke their fingers in cavities that it is not their business to poke their fingers in! If anyone in privileged power is not comfortable with the Malta situation now, there is a way out, which is to quit that power that they have been entrusted with to serve all and not one’s whims, especially when none of the parliamentary parties had the guts to bring up the issue during the 2008 election campaign.

Divorce is going to be an issue during the forthcoming EU Parliamentary 2009 June elections in which I will be participating as representative of Malta’s first Liberal Democratic Party, Alpha. My party had already taken part in the 2004 EU Parliamentary elections when divorce was on our agenda. This time round all the political participants in the EU elections are incorporating divorce on their public cards – the difference being that Alpha is stating that the time for discussion has long been up and that divorce is to be implemented right away.

The people are simply bored stiff listening to sermons or reading public outcries. It is evident that people in the matrimonial boiling brew want divorce to materialise. There is nothing further to discuss and analyse. People involved have substituted their suffocation on the matter by the alternative of conducting their life as they deem fit. A number of them are not at ease with this situation for obvious reasons.

The hackneyed moral arguments on the traumatic effects on children are nothing but superfluous submissions in a hypocritical game that the double-faced among us typically excel in. Divorce is an a priori right of those who decide to marry – the other side of the coin so to speak. This reality is recognised the world over and we have stomach indigestion uttering and writing the same glaring fact, again and again.

It is discriminatory not to legislate a divorce law. As with abortion, couples will be travelling abroad to marry in an EU country and then return here for the farce of a white wedding with all the amazing incredulities that some people stupidly go in for to depict it in the imaginary perfect wedding... most of which sooner than one imagines end up in the toilet bowl! Divorce now, by rightful demand!

Emmy Bezzina

Alpha Liberal Democratic Party

Valletta