Divorce has been pushed on to the front burner and is in the news again with words like “bombshell” and “bolt of lightning”, shoving all other news to the sidelines.

Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando has shocked the Archbishop, ‘gazumped’ the leader of the Opposition, kept the Prime Minister in the dark and according to The Times “surprised the country” by presenting a Private Member’s Bill for the introduction of divorce.

Oh dear, oh dear, this latest ploy should produce another parliamentary farce when it comes to voting on the bill, if it even gets to see the light of day. And we will probably have a rerun of JPO’s crocodile tears before long.

He is riding high at the moment because there are so many people in favour of divorce. That is why the PN parliamentary group were not going to ask him to withdraw the Bill.

It is also why he figured that he could upset the establishment and get away with it. But what will happen when it all fizzles out?

Now I have no problem with upsetting the establishment, it needs shock treatment once in a while.

But first of all JPO is part of the establishment and secondly, he has lost credibility over his Mistra antics, which exposed his hypocritical stance on the environment.

Also his posing as a journalist to get at his critic, then Opposition leader Alfred Sant, at the height of the Mistra scandal, was cheap.

The former PM and Labour leader told The Times that he “regretted that such an important subject had fallen in the hands of an MP who was politically and morally corrupt”.

JPO has claimed that he had “given the bill a lot of thought and he felt it was the right thing to do for society.”

Yeah right, and I suppose there is no personal interest in this at all. Considering his political history, some of us are finding this a little hard to swallow, despite thinking that divorce has to be tackled.

And his thoughts that “We cannot allow our religious sentiments to interfere with our obligations towards citizens who wish to regularise their position following an irrevocably failed marriage,” are commendable.

It is a shame he did not include sharing “the right thing to do for society” with his parliamentary colleagues. I suppose he would not have got the limelight if he had.

The PM said he “disagreed with Pullicino Orlando’s “position and his method”.

Considering that he (JPO) thought of informing his ex wife, an Opposition MP, on what he was up to, but not Dr Gonzi or any of his parliamentary colleagues, most would agree that his modus operandi was questionable.

Mind you, the PM should have got used to JPO’s antics by now. Yet, he seems to still be covering for him: “Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s decision to move a private member’s bill for the introduction of divorce was to stimulate debate,” he said.

Is that an admission that all the other MPs are complacently slumbering? Many have now agreed that the subject needs to be debated.

Some, unnamed, PN MPs were even reported as seeing this kerfuffle as a wake-up call for the Party “to get its head out of the sand” and discuss divorce seriously.

Then why did none of them do anything about it? And how are we expected to believe they will take it seriously if they are all so bashful about being named as being in favour of divorce?

JPO must have seen a clear window of opportunity and took advantage of the situation.

Although he was criticised for his “method”, he only got a small knuckle rap from the PM and his colleagues. Why?

Does JPO know something the PM does not want the rest of us to know? Or is it just that the PM wants us to believe that whatever disagreements and slights might occur, there are no chinks in his Party?

Or, is it simply that the PM and his colleagues do not want to alienate those wanting divorce?

“He (JPO) took a personal initiative based on his personal position which was well known, so his position did not surprise anyone,” said the PM.

Yet Dr Gonzi had earlier been quoted as saying: “This is not something that should be presented as ‘a surprise’ without any process of examination or consultation. We need to discuss this in the parliamentary group to take an official position.”

PN sources were also quoted as saying that JPO’s Private Member’s Bill for the introduction of divorce was “simply a bombshell dropped by a lone ranger”.

Besides, it certainly took the archbishop by surprise. Maybe the reason why JPO kept his cards close to his chest was that he did not want any leaks to get through to the Curia.

In an interview on Radio RTK, the Curia’s broadcasting arm, Archbishop Paul Cremona said the move came like a “bolt of lightning” and he hoped it would be defeated.

He argued that no MP had the moral authority to file a bill to divorce, since it did not feature in the electoral manifestos of both parties.

Let’s face it, most of us know that the majority, if not all, of the Nationalist politicians are conservative prudes and are a step away from jumped up altar boys; no wonder the archbishop was taken aback.

There is no way that they are willingly and visibly going to go against the Church. So this whole divorce issue is going to run and run.

”We need to discuss this in the parliamentary group to take an official position,” said the PM.

But after the group met on Wednesday the official position is not at all clear. All I could read were delaying tactics.

We know Dr Gonzi’s position. “I am against divorce”, he said and his colleagues are all keeping shtum.

The Nationalist MPs refused to give their personal views on divorce as they walked in and out of the Wednesday meeting.

And although JPO said he was confident there were some MPs from the government side who supported him on the issue, he did not say who they were, it was reported.

The PM’s reason for being against divorce is akin to the Archbishop’s “because I am in favour of strong families”.

Most people are in favour of strong families. Those whose marriages break up are not happy about it and break-up involves a lot of pain, but not allowing divorce does not ensure strong families, it allows miserable ones to survive.

An interesting online comment from Mgr Victor Zammit McKeon, quoting from the Compendium of the Catholic Church, shows that when comparing state divorce to a Church annulment the result is the same. A married couple are allowed to remarry.

“The Church permits the physical separation of spouses when for serious reasons their living together becomes practically impossible, even though there may be hope for their reconciliation.

“As long as one’s spouse lives, however, one is not free to contract a new union, (and here comes the interesting bit) except if the marriage be null and be declared so by ecclesiastical authority.”

So married couples are allowed to remarry but only when sanctioned by the Church. But surely, if divorce weakens families so do annulments.

The PM was non-committal on whether the bill would make it to the parliamentary agenda.

For the Private Member’s Bill to be debated and voted on in Parliament it will have to be put on the agenda by the House Business Committee.

The Speaker Michael Frendo chairs it and the three government members are Tonio Borg, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, David Agius and Frederick Azzopardi. Angelo Farrugia and Joe Mizzi represent the Opposition.

Whether the government members will go against the PM’s opinion and the Curia remains to be seen. But taking past performances into consideration, it does not bode well for it even making the agenda.

As for the Opposition, its leader Joseph Muscat has said that his position is in favour of divorce and he would grant a free vote in Parliament.

But that will not hold much water as even when the whole Opposition vote with their Party they still lose out by one vote.

Besides, although the Labour Party is slightly more progressive then the Nationalist Party it has its share of conservative thinkers and hypocrites.

In a way if this bill ever gets that far, it will be a test on whether the House will vote for an issue according to what they really think rather than what their Party dictates.

The question is, even if the PN members were granted a free vote would they use it, or would they be too scared of the Church’s

censor?

“Convinced Catholics should vote in favour of stable marriages and against divorce,” the Archbishop said in his interview.

I am not sure what a “convinced Catholic” is, but I do know that stopping divorce legislation is no guarantee for stable marriages.

Marriages break up with or without the possibility of divorce.

The PM is stalling and said that the discussion at a party and national level will continue and when asked if he was speaking about a referendum or an electoral commitment, he said that too was an issue, which had to be discussed.

As I said earlier, this show is guaranteed to run and run. No rush. We are, after all, the only country in the world with no divorce, bar the Philippines.

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