Let me start from the widest possible angle: our people have evolved in one direction and one only over the past years – towards more and better standards in anything and everything.

This is what inspired Independence, and even the choice of Dom Mintoff and his party in 1971 can be seen as a step in this direction, away from the fuddy-duddy hothouse atmosphere of the late 1960s. This is what inspired the PN victory in 1981 and in 1987. And it is surely this desire for progress, openness, aggiornamento, an improvement in the quality of life that inspired the 1998 re-opening of the EU accession talks election and naturally the 2003 EU referendum and subsequent elections after that.

It is one trend line – up and away from an insular mentality to a more pluralistic, cosmopolitan society. Walking in the streets today, on the buses, one hears all kinds of languages spoken. People are no longer restricted to their villages, the majority of Maltese travel, students get travel as part of their studies, EU membership has enabled the flow of people abroad and of foreigners here, people are increasingly marrying foreigners, etc.

Many of our compatriots are fully au courant with what is taking place around the world: the internet, following the inroads made by television, especially that originating in foreign countries, as well as the ease of communication with anywhere, have opened up the mentalities of the Maltese.

Study after study has shown that the basic mentality of the Maltese people has evolved in only one direction over the past generation. The values of the Maltese are today not very different from those of mainline Europe.

This has been accompanied by a slippage of religious affiliation and practice: the trend line of decreasing church going is practically parallel to the trend line towards a cosmopolitan average European set of values.

This, in short, is the underlying experience of what to be a Maltese has come to mean. No student of society of any note has challenged this interpretation, which is then comforted by any checking each one of us may do around him or her.

The long and short of this trend line is accompanied, or rather we may say has led to, serious shakiness in our marriages. Marriages failed in the past, but today failed marriages affect practically every family, seen in the wider sense. One may argue till the cows come home whether this means that marriages in Malta are in a crisis or not. The fact is marriages do fail, new couplings are seen sprouting all the time and young people, if they do get married, have a decidedly divorcist mentality even as they trip down the aisle. I defy anybody to query this.

So the upshot of all this trend line is that one would expect the Maltese people to tackle the divorce issue sooner or later and the Maltese people to get to a point where divorce anyhow becomes allowed by the law of the land.

On the one hand, I said it recently, the experience of other countries teaches us that countries far bigger than us turned down divorce the first time they had to choose. On the other hand, for what I today called the trend line to suddenly buckle and turn back, something big must have happened inside our people’s psyche – and it doesn’t look like that at all.

Or else someone must have really, really boobed.

Today I want to concentrate on this. This is my blame game for today.

If the Maltese public yesterday fortnight chooses to reject the divorce proposal that could be because the Yes proponents have been so damned inept. For now I discard the contrary opinion that if it’s going to be a No vote (as all polls, both public and private, seem to foretell) that’s because of a massive push by the church and related pressure groups, or because the Maltese public is being scared by threats of earthquakes, or because the No side is ‘so powerful’.

On the contrary, what I see around me is a massive media plugging for a Yes vote, as well as on Facebook and similar sites. I see young people who are becoming really frantic and speaking (quite seriously) of leaving this country. All I see around me are people who have become quite jumpy and paranoid, and who see church plots around every corner.

To my mind, there is a simpler reason why a No vote looks increasingly like being the outcome in two weeks’ time: the No side has been extremely careful while the Yes side has been careless and even worse than that.

This goes quite a long time back.

I think it is clear that for the Maltese political allegiances run strong. Even in this case, where in many households it is a generation issue with young people on the one side and older people on the other, our five-yearly binge with partisan politics means that scratch under the surface and people divide into Nationalists or Labourites.

In this issue we have had on the one hand two PN rebels and on the other hand the whole weight of the Labour Party. The rest of the PN says it is against divorce (though I doubt whether individually and silently they believe all that they say).

From what I hear around me, people with moderate to hard PN sympathies will have nothing to do with Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando after his shenanigans at the last election which, whatever he says, almost cost his party the election, and also in the manner in which he has sprung the divorce issue on his prime minister and the party until that defining moment when he and Jesmond Mugliett stood along with the entire Labour MPs and defeated the government side on the referendum issue.

For many on the PN side, the divorce vote is looked at not as an issue in itself but as a JPO issue. I don’t look at it like that and I have declared I will vote in favour of divorce but I’m not a majority. There are not many who can vote for divorce without being waylaid by for or against JPO.

Then again, the Yes side have been inept, I said. I still cannot understand how Jesmond Mugliett who stood up next to JPO, has been completely out or left out of this campaign. I cannot understand how apart from Michael Falzon, the father of Mepa who has disowned his progeny, the trio JPO – Varist – Deborah have not sought to broaden their core group. I cannot understand the value of their strategy of holding events which then are translated to the public by the selective media instead of making better efforts to meet people and to address people’s concerns.

Then again some signal mistakes have been committed. Deborah Schembri’s issue with the Curia over her work at the Tribunal distorted the entire campaign.

Let’s turn to the other side. The Labour Party, under Joe Muscat and with Evarist Bartolo’s urging, supported the referendum motion in Parliament and everything was done, they said, unanimously.

But the signs are that swathes of the party membership are now having second thoughts. That is why the party is now insisting its supporters have a ‘free vote’. How one can translate a unanimous vote in the House with a free vote at the hustings beats me.

If it’s going to be a No vote, that would mean that Labour has been once again out-manouvred, just as and in the same way as it was out-manouvred in the EU referendum. If it’s going to be a No vote, that will not mean that no PN supporter voted Yes (just as in 2003 there were PN supporters who voted against EU membership) but even more it will mean that a huge chunk of Labour supporters did not support their leadership in a Yes vote. Joe Muscat has recently said that he personally will remain in favour of divorce. The significance of this statement seems to have escaped many.

Then also the nature of the debate has opened up what for many years had formed part of the Labour DNA – an anticlerical vein – something which looked like being shelved for ever after the tragedies of the past (Labour was more victim than perpetrator). But a look at L-Orizzont of the past months reveals this strand has taken new life.

This anticlericalism has been reflected and amplified among the supporters of the Yes vote and while having merits on its part, it has ostracized other possible supporters.

Fundamentally, in any election/referendum in Malta, as anywhere else, the trick is to gain the middle ground. By making no attempt to gain this ground, or rather by pushing people into defending the church, the Yes coalition signed its own doom.

This does not mean that the No side did not, or does not, commit blunders. Of course it does. The No video is ludicrous, with scenes from anywhere but Malta and tree-huggers, if you don’t mind. The top people on the No side don’t have communication as their forte, but they sensibly are avoiding giving further hostages as Helen d’Amato did.

And the billboard just out, that choosing divorce is risky is exactly what Labour should have issued on the EU referendum – but didn’t.

I realize all that I have said today may be termed as too politicized and does not tackle the real issue of marriage breakdown and what alternatives there are. You see, the way I have written today is just like most of us reason.

It was left to a bunch of kids, the StandUp group, to focus on

1. what will happen to people if it’s a No vote

2. people in some situations want to marry but can’t.

They put to shame JPO and Varist.

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