A committee that will be campaigning in favour of the introduction of divorce legislation, as proposed by Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando last July, has been established and is expected to hold its first press conference tomorrow.

The committee has chosen ‘Iva’ (yes) as its name and was set up on the initiative of Dr Pullicino Orlando and Labour MP Evarist Bartolo, according to David Micallef St John, one of the committee members.

Dr Pullicino Orlando came up with the idea of a pro-divorce movement on 20 October, transmitting it by means of a simple comment on his Facebook page: “Thinking of organising a pro-divorce movement, what do you think?”

He had likened the idea of a pro-divorce movement to the Moviment Iva that campaigned in favour of Malta’s EU membership in the run-up to a referendum in 2003.

In addition to the two MPs, the committee is also made up of Alternattiva Demokratika (AD) chairman Michael Briguglio, former Nationalist minister Michael Falzon, former Labour MEP candidate Marlene Mizzi (the chairman of the Labour Business Forum), AD spokesperson for civil rights Yvonne Arqueros Ebejer and Martin Scicluna from the Today Public Policy Institute, as well as three individuals who do not represent any party or entity: David Micallef St John, Roderick Bartolo and Etienne Borg. The committee chairman is lawyer Deborah Schembri.