I have personally witnessed and been involved in two referendum campaigns: the 2003 referendum on Malta’s accession to the European Union and the campaign currently underway on the introduction of responsible divorce in Malta. The 2003 campaign included also a certain element of spin and, despite the fact that I actively campaigned in favour of Malta’s accession to the EU, I have to admit that the No side did at least have some factual arguments on which to base its stance. This does not mean that the pros did not and do not outweigh the cons, but that in this case, the No camp did at least manage to articulate sound factual arguments. The fact that these arguments were, at least in my view, manifestly isolationist and symptomatic of an insular mentality is a different kettle of fish and, anyway, that referendum and the campaign leading to it, are now history.

In contrast to the referendum in 2003, we are now witnessing a No to divorce campaign that is characterised by the fact that this particular side of the fence has not yet managed to articulate one single, valid, rational and secular argument against the introduction of divorce as proposed by the Pullicino Orland-Bartolo Bill, not one single argument….

The Movement Against Divorce has run a campaign based solely on scaremongering. Last Wednesday, I just randomly tuned my car radio to 101 and heard Austin Bencini utter the phrase “Issa, bid-divorzju, iż-żwieġ tiegħek ma jgħodd xejn għax jistenna erba’ snin u jitlaq ‘l hemm” (with the introduction of divorce, your marriage will be devalued because [your partner] can just pack up and leave after four years). I am not sure that I reproduced the exact remark verbatim, but the sense is more or less the same. This line of thought is an abject and perhaps deliberate misinterpretation of facts and a completely pathetic argument.

First of all, with the bill as proposed, a person can only file for divorce once the couple has been separated for four years or more. This means that it is mathematically impossible for anybody to file for divorce on the 4th anniversary of his/her wedding, as is being implied by the Movement Against Divorce posters and by Dr Bencini. I will reiterate – at the risk of sounding repetitive – that before anyone can file for divorce, they will have had to be separated for at least four years, and for one to separate, one would have had to go through a marital break up. I don’t know of that many people who would give up on a partner with whom they are happy, just for the sake of it and only because responsible divorce has made it in to our statute books. Before filing for a divorce, therefore, one will have had to go through at least two other stages, and the suggestion that because of divorce, one would be anxiously keeping track of the passage of time, perhaps by carving crosses on a bench, like Robinson Crusoe on that remote tropical island, is an offence to the intelligence of the Maltese electorate. It might have resonated with the electorate in the 60s but, given the huge leaps in the level of education of the general population, such a proposition should in this day and age be consigned to the dustbin of history.

The only intention behind this type of reasoning is to scare the electorate into voting No. Our statute books include the possible of filing for separation, yet how many couples knock at the doors of the law Courts in Valletta on the day after their wedding, to capriciously file for separation?

Let’s say that it were possible to file for divorce exactly four years after getting married, who in his right mind would waste thousands of hard-earned euros to get married, with the intention of filing for divorce as soon as “the alarm clock strikes four years”, supposedly to get married again? Why go through all the hassle? This is an example of campaigning at its very worst and I never imagined that the No campaign would have stooped so low. I am not implying that the Yes camp are purity incarnate, or that their campaign has been immaculate and free from the pitfalls of negative campaigning, but I am seeing a heavier reliance on spin and scaremongering tactics on the No side. Dr Bencini himself is not new to this sort of attitude – one remembers the fuss he kicked up after Marlene Mizzi read out the definition of his much-treasured “common good concept” straight from the manifesto of the Nazi party.

I cannot but mention the very recent case of the photo-shopped Iva bill boards, which were doing the rounds on the internet, and which were intended to vilify two leading supporters of the Iva Movement. And I should also note that, although one can never know for sure the name of the person/persons behind this despicable initiative, they used the motto and logos of the Moviment Żwieġ Bla Divorzju, without as much of a disclaimer from the latter. This same movement has whined incessantly about the “bullying” tactics being used to silence it, when its campaign is being aided by the Church and, to a certain extent, even by the Nationalist Party, albeit passively (for example, by not accepting paid adverts by Iva).

As if this were not enough, every day we get stories about members of the clergy bullying lay people into voting No – this week there have been at least two reports of priests denying communion and confession to people intending to vote Yes (despite the fact that the Church itself has declared that this should not be the case) and there were reports about parish priests trying to coerce couples at their pre-marriage interviews, into voting No, by trying to make them believe that they by voting Yes, they would somehow be invalidating their own marriage.

It is unbelievable that in a modern EU member state, and decades after the lifting of the interdiction, some people are still resorting to this type of scare-mongering. This is perhaps a consequence of the negative campaign spun by the No side.

It is worth pointing out that, to date, 118 days after the setting up of the Movement Against Divorce, the following 10 questions remain unanswered:

1 Why it is opposing the “Pullicino Orlando-Bartolo Bill”?

2 Why is it focusing all its energies on a bill that will only sanction (on paper) the dissolution of an already lapsed marriage?

3 Why is it targeting divorce (which is the very last stage of marriage breakdowns) and not separations?

4 Why are annulments considered as being less “harmful” than divorce?

5 If it is so much in favour of the indissolubility of marriage, then why is it not targeting the chief cause of marital break-up, i.e. economic issues?

6 Why has it kept mum over the fact that the Marriage Act of 1975 recognises divorce decrees issued by foreign courts to people domiciled in that particular countries?

7 What are they proposing: to make two people who cannot live together to forcibly do so? Will the children not suffer more?

8 If a neighbour’s marriage has ‘gone to the dogs’, why prevent him/her from starting a new life, with a new partner? How does it affect them?

9 Why did it keep quiet over the proposed cohabitation bill? Is it a “lesser evil”?

10 Not legislating on divorce entails a social cost due to the fact that a considerable number of people who have been through a marriage break up have now moved on and are in a relationship with another partner, which puts them in a legal limbo. Do they have a solution out of this situation?

In the absence of an answer to these questions, and given the type of campaign launched by the No Camp, one can infer that the only reason for their stance is that the introduction of responsible divorce is considered to go counter to their views on the relationship between church and state and they are willing to deprive people of their right to fulfilment and happiness by opposing the introduction of divorce, tooth and nail.

It is important that all those who have civil liberties at heart turn up at the polling booth on the day of the referendum. Let’s all give them a 28 May to remember, by voting Yes to the introduction of responsible divorce in Malta, Yes to the continuation of the Europeanisation of Malta and No to the imposition of the will of a few on those of us who have not been so lucky in their marriages.