Just 13 months after His Holiness Pope Benedict was in Malta, urging us to safeguard our traditional family values and defend the institution of marriage, we are being asked to vote on whether or not to allow the introduction of divorce in Malta.

May I point out the well-known fact that neither of the two political parties represented in Parliament had ever referred to divorce in their pre-election manifests. Nevertheless, an MP on the government side, in a “marriage of convenience” with a colleague on the Opposition benches forwarded a Private Member’s Bill for the inclusion of divorce in Maltese law.

To add insult to injury, these two gentlemen, in cahoots with, I must say, quite a large number of our representatives in Parliament formulated a referendum question, which, instead of asking the electorate to vote yes or no for divorce, is obviously inclined to influence voters towards voting yes.

This loaded question is asking us to vote for what they call a “no fault divorce”. This means that any of the parties to the marriage can capriciously, after four years separated from his/her spouse, get a divorce irrespective of whether the other party wants a divorce or not.

Moreover, the referendum promises that maintenance is guaranteed and the children protected. This so-called guarantee is an absolute fabrication. A look at the cases of default of maintenance payments in cases of separation still pending before Maltese courts attests to this. A person earning a medium scale salary would have a hard time maintaining the children from his former marriage when he re-marries and has to provide for those of his second, or third one.

The honourable gentlemen promise that the children would be protected. From what, may I ask? From the legal mayhem caused by divorce? From the multiple divorces and re-marriages of their parents? Divorce will provide these same children with an insidious option of reverting to the destruction of their own marriage at the first, albeit slight, difficulty they encounter.

The introduction of divorce, any kind of divorce, will eventually corrode the strong base on which Maltese society is founded, the family. We cannot, for the sake of present and future generations, allow such a thing to happen.

Mario Pellicano

SIGGIEWI