You know a politician is in trouble when he threatens to resign over an issue and people shrug and call his bluff: “Ok, go ahead...”
Austin Gatt threw down the gauntlet this week and said that if the Nationalist Party ever backs divorce he will resign. At first the reactions to this were in the vein of admiration and adoration, as the conservative core of the PN came out of the wilderness to thank him for putting the ‘religio’ back in the ‘religio e patria’ slogan of their beloved party.
But eventually, the sentiment in the flow of comments changed, indicating that not everyone would be tearing their hair out to see him go, nor were they particularly impressed by his theatrics. The grand gesture also fell a bit flat because, not too long ago, he had already said that he would not be contesting the next election in any case.
The article by Austin Gatt as well as the Bondiplus programme dedicated completely to the anti-divorce movement have tested the waters of public opinion in a way that polls and surveys don’t often do. This strategy has allowed room for manoeuvre so that the PN can scan the landscape, see which way the wind is blowing and maximise its hold on the majority of voters. For yes, of course, this is about votes.
It always is.
The Nationalist Party is now facing its moment of truth as the liberals and conservatives within its fold find themselves completely at odds over the introduction of divorce. Either way it swings, the party is going to lose a large slice of support.
The Church has promised to stay out of the whole debate, so instead the political big guns have been rolled out. Cue Eddie Fenech Adami speaking on RTK (where else?), preaching fire and brimstone as if he were a latter day Elmer Gantry. If Austin Gatt brought out the conservative core, then the former Prime Minister has brought out the religious right; the ones who call themselves ‘the true Nationalists’ who stood by his side during those heady, glory days of the 1980s when Mintoff was the common enemy and mass meetings every Sunday served as a weekly rallying cry to bring down Labour.
Is-sewwa jirbaħ żgur (righteousness will prevail) was not merely a catchy slogan: they genuinely believed that God was on their side.
Seen in this context it is understandable that those who vote PN are disoriented. Traditionally it has always been Labour which has been on the wrong side of the Church’s teachings, with Mintoff at the forefront of the battle to wrestle Malta into some kind of secularism. In the 1960s, it was easy to sway public opinion and portray Dom as the devil incarnate – and it worked. These days, attempts to use religion and a fear of eternal damnation are met with an incredulous look: are you serious?
The campaign
While Austin tried to play the card of political loyalty and Eddie trotted out religious conviction, the official anti-divorce campaign has been busy using another tack.
The public face is Dr Andre Camilleri, a genteel-looking gentlemen who ticks all the right boxes – a lawyer by profession, in a long marriage, low key, soft-spoken and who is just the right age to appeal to those who are 40 and over, an important demographic. This is the age group which looks around in bewilderment at what is happening to the Malta they once knew, and who are not too sure they are happy with what they see. The debris of broken marriages lies all around them with fancy new words like “partner” and “cohabitation” being banded about too casually for their liking.
Although I do not think that Dr Camilleri put forward very convincing arguments, I tried to set aside my own pro-divorce bias and put myself in the shoes of those who are on the fence in this debate. Yes, someone has now given a voice to their concerns and it is someone who is respected and has just the right kind of middle-class “one of us” image. It is telling that all of a sudden those who were perhaps “afraid” to speak out against divorce for fear of being viewed as hopelessly out-of-touch and old-fashioned fuddy-duddies have this week been busy commenting online.
They equate divorce with ‘tahwid’ (a free-for-all); a fast and loose lifestyle in which nothing is permanent and people their age have suddenly become alarmingly single again, partying with 20-year-olds instead of staying respectably at home, wrapped up cosily on the sofa, watching TV and drinking copious amounts of tea.
The faction which identified so readily with what Dr Camilleri was saying wishes to see Malta pulled back from the brink and yearns to put a stop to these new-fangled second “relationships” liberally sprinkled with an influx of new babies who will grow up to find that they have half brothers and sisters all over the place. It is useless trying to reason with them for the umpteenth time that all this is happening anyway without divorce, for in their mind the introduction of divorce will only seem to condone this state of affairs. In fact, it becomes pretty clear when reading and hearing anti-divorce arguments that they have equated being pro divorce with advocating for more people to walk out on their marriage.
It is this fallacy that has whipped up so much hysteria.
It is also this fallacy that led to one of the silliest arguments I’ve ever heard against divorce.
The other faces of the ‘no to divorce’ lobby is a young married couple, Pierre and Mirielle Cordina, who presumably were roped in for the youth vote. Speaking about the sacrament of marriage and the importance of adhering to her vows and the promise she made to her husband, Mirielle said that with the availability of divorce, those vows would mean nothing because her marriage can then be easily dissolved. The complete lack of logic in this statement undermines the whole anti divorce argument, especially the argument based on the sanctity of a Catholic marriage. The most obvious flaw in this reasoning is this: a truly devout Catholic will never resort to divorce, no matter how available it is. In fact, the very image conjured up of droves of Maltese Catholics who got married in church after the obligatory Cana course, lining up to get a divorce speaks volumes about the nonchalant decision to have a church wedding.
More significantly, it is up to Mirielle and Pierre to ensure that the vows and promises they made to stay together “until death do us part” are not broken. It is the couple within the marriage that weakens the bonds of the institution through their behaviour towards each other. And it is up to the couple to keep strengthening those bonds even if the whole world is falling apart around them. After all it is not divorce which sucks all the life out of a marriage until it has shrivelled and died, but married couples themselves.
To blame the existence of divorce for a failed marriage is an abdication of free will. With that reasoning the existence of separation laws should also be blamed for broken marriages, but with that argument we might as well say it is illegal to leave your spouse. If that sounds absurd to us, well then so should the fact that a legally separated couple is still considered to be technically ‘married’, which is how things stand today without divorce.
To borrow the slogan used to good effect by the Irish pro-divorce lobby, what we are talking about here is ‘the right to remarry’, if you so wish. Ahh, remarriage. Now, there’s the crunch for many who are opposing divorce and this is where the masks truly come off. For, if what is really at play here is the spiteful (and yet, given human nature, perfectly understandable) refusal to make it possible for an ex-wife or ex-husband to remarry, then let us just be honest and say so.
“I don’t agree with divorce because I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him/her get married to someone else after dumping me”.
It is a legitimate reason, of course, but it doesn’t quite sound as noble and morally uplifting as objecting to divorce on the grounds of one’s faith.
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