As I sat in what used to be the Grand Master’s private chapel last Wednesday and as the government and the Opposition battled the divorce issue across the House Business Committee table, I mused on the incredible way this issue has got us into all sorts of convoluted positions.

More and yet more was still to come.

I fail to see how such a straightforward matter could become so complex, nor how our politicians seem to be so cut off from reality, so fixated on getting the extra mile from publicity that even a simple, straight subject has to end up being twisted beyond recognition, pulled this way and that until people no longer know what to make of it.

Let me try and go about the issue in an orderly manner.

On the whole, I am in favour of the introduction of divorce in Malta, have been so for many years.

I think it cannot be put off indefinitely and we have now come to the point where it must be faced. It is true that no party, except Alternattiva, mentioned the introduction of divorce in its electoral manifesto in 2008, but let’s face it, if one party included this commitment and the other did not, this would have turned the election into a referendum on divorce by any other name.

I know that a referendum on divorce possibly might not get a majority in favour the first time round, but even so I’d rather prefer it to be introduced by popular acclaim some years down the line, than having Parliament decide it for us.

There is no way in a million years that our Parliament can ever decide to approve the introduction of divorce in Malta. I believe that it is far more likely divorce could be introduced by popular acclaim than by a parliamentary vote.

You could see this very clearly last Wednesday. They huffed and harrumphed both at the HBC and in the plenary later where all MPs (except Dr Sant who left after the votes) stayed on until 5pm because of a possibility they could be called to vote on whether to have a debate on the referendum question or not.

They waited for the Speaker to retire to consider a ruling, twice. But no vote was taken. I even suspect that both sides, for all the posturing, were rather afraid of the vote.

On the one hand we had JPO and the Opposition repeatedly claiming there was now an absolute majority in the House, but the government was careful not to test this theory. At the same time I have a niggling suspicion that for all the unanimity shown by Labour in supporting the Opposition motion, down to agreeing to it by secret ballot, signing their names on it, announcing it en bloc for the cameras, that there are some MPs who have already declared they are against divorce and even their signature on a motion does not mean they have changed their minds.

On the other hand, it is well known that it is not just JPO but quite a number of other PN MPs who have expressed themselves in favour of divorce even though there was also unanimity (but no secret vote) in the parliamentary group and executive committee when they supported the PN stand yesterday week.

In other words, both sides seem afraid of splits appearing inside them, but of course they just have to act manly and turn the issue around. Both parties are afraid of alienating the conservative and church-led voters.

That is why the issue keeps going round in circles.

So first we had Labour’s insistence to vote on the Opposition motion setting the referendum question as early as this week.

Then we had the Prime Minister, after first agreeing to a referendum, proposing a more simple question rather than the three-point one suggested by JPO and Labour.

Each move is analysed, dissected and looked at under a microscope, as if it is hiding all sorts of hidden agendas or hidden aims.

Tonio Borg seemed to think last Wednesday that Labour’s insistence that the referendum question be voted on by this week was some kind of Labour imposition.

Labour suspected that Dr Borg’s plea to allow time to the PN parliamentary group to look at the motion and discuss it was a delaying tactic.

Inside the Nationalist Party I sense huge anger at JPO for the way he went about the whole thing just as the Italians are telling Berlusconi (on a different issue): If not now, when?

Up to a few days ago I rather looked forward to Parliament having an extended discussion on the subject with the participation of all or most MPs. But now I understand the two parties are afraid of divergences appearing and splits being accentuated.

I still hope the debate will be held but am increasingly afraid it will not.

The alternative in this case has been the rather hurried debate about the question to be submitted to the electorate and the announcing of the date.

Even the latter issue became an issue in itself. While inside the Paladini Chapel last Wednesday I got an SMS to explain what the whole palaver was about: ‘they’ want to hold the referendum the day after the Duluri, my message said.

That was later to be clarified that No, that was not the intended date, but late in May. Was that right? Or was that a fallback position?

Similarly, we now have huge debates on the referendum question: just reducing it to a simple yes and no about divorce as such is portrayed as an attempt to pump up the No vote, since this could be painted as ranging all the way from a strict and secure divorce to a Las Vegas one.

On the other hand, someone commented that all it takes to turn a strict divorce regime into a more liberal one is just a simple parliamentary majority. So all the importance in the three conditions set in the JPO-Evarist motion is rather relative in the end.

This will only be the third referendum in our country’s not yet 50-year-old statehood. It is a social issue, unlike the previous two, which were political. It affects every family, every citizen. There is on either side of it religious convictions or lack of.

In the background, there is the indisputable fact that the traditional Maltese family has changed. We can argue till the cows come home whether this is the case with a majority of families or a small or bigger minority of families. The fact remains that today’s 20-year-olds have a divorcist mentality just like their counterparts elsewhere – this is proved by countless opinion polls and surveys. The fact that many of them get married in church means absolutely nothing, as anyone can see. The absence of a divorce procedure in our courts of justice is not keeping couples together when they have drifted apart. It is only hindering the creation of new family units out of the breakages of former marriages and thus creating new forms of hardship.

It is equally true that the introduction of divorce in other countries has speeded up the crumbling of family values. I still have to be persuaded that refusing to accept divorce can stop this glacial movement.

So there, we get all so excited, argumentative and combative over the issue and then we confuse the main issue with so many side issues that no one seems to understand anything at all. People reading about parliamentary goings-on think that MPs are at each others’ throats: they’re not as we few who stayed with them for around seven hours last Wednesday can vouch. But is this issue about the referendum question and the motion proposing it only about divorce, or is it a rather sure way of giving the government its first parliamentary defeat? Is that it?

We have excitable media, and super-excitable parties churning out press releases like there’s no tomorrow. Let’s have a proper discussion, in the country if not in the House, and let us focus on the main issue rather than getting pushed or pulled on various side issues.

Then, come May, or whenever (but not the day after the religiously-charged date of Duluri, please) let us all go and vote what we in our hearts and in our consciences believe to be the right thing to do.

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