Last week, I urged readers to take a good look at the people around them and reflect on their choices regarding the divorce referendum and what these choices tell them about these people and about the issue itself. And I could have added what it tells them about Malta.

All through last week, I was continually surprised with what my observations of people around me and my acquaintances revealed.

I found out, for instance, that many people in a non-marriage relationship simply and astonishingly did not bother to collect their vote or go and vote. I found that people who either they themselves or their children very much needed divorce just out of bloody-mindedness voted No. Or perhaps because, being Nationalists, they preferred to kick JPO rather than let the party down.

And as I said last week, I continued to find people living in marriages not worth the paper they are printed upon simply refusing to vote Yes.

That’s democracy for you. Any time the country is called to the polls and we have our usual scenes of half-dead people being carried in to vote, we realise that this person’s vote is worth as much as my vote, as much as your vote. No more, nor less.

People have their own particular, personal and idiosyncratic take on issues, even an issue such as divorce, which one would have thought is simple and clear-cut. Thus, when a country is faced with a particularly important decision and might be treading new ground, it will only be the law of averages that cuts through the idiosyncrasies and particular viewpoints and delivers the average feeling of the country.

In this particular case, the issue, though apparently clear-cut, progressively became clouded over with emotional undertones, non-sequiturs and outrageous claims about the other side that were not carefully shot down and removed from public perception.

As a result, here we are this morning wondering if it’s going to be a Yes with a few thousand votes or a No with a few thousand votes. As in anything our country has to decide upon, whether it is a new government or joining the EU or allowing divorce on our statute books, we make it by just a few thousand votes this way or that most times. Leaving national elections aside, there must be something (or something missing) in our national mental composition that makes us split almost equally on issues about which a wider consensus should have been preferable.

That’s not all. Here we are on this morning, and all I can see is that there will be hell to pay for the splurge of the past months, whatever the outcome.

Once the voting is over and the results announced, the losing side will begin the blame game. And this time, I predict, it will be a particularly vicious one with consequences unfolding and leading to the coming general election.

Let’s examine the consequences.

A No win will enrage the young people of Malta, especially the most mobile, the ones who would like to study abroad, the ones who already have it up to here with the narrow provincial attitude of Maltese officialdom, the ones who most probably have completed their tertiary studies and who have no qualms at all about relocating elsewhere out of the hothouse atmosphere they has stifled in the past weeks.

A No win will tell them the Church is still all-powerful in Malta, and that the elderly, even if they were wheeled to polling booths by nuns, and the parents and grandparents whose children may have already encountered marital difficulties and who still voted No, and the lay Catholic organisations, and the multiple allsorts of prayer groups, are still too numerous in the country.

There is also a backbone grassroots of solid middle class and possibly middle-aged people, as shown by the people who flocked to the No event at the Phoenicia Hotel ballroom, the people with unimpeachable logic such as Dr Galea Salomone and, maybe less, Dr Andre Camilleri.

Most of all, especially for those who voted Yes and who will remain in Malta (perhaps for lack of opportunities to go anywhere else), the No victory will erupt in a vicious anticlerical wave. The events of the past weeks, especially the cavalier way in which church-related bodies treated electoral law and the Day of Silence and Reflection on Friday should have led to a growing wave of disgust nationwide but, if it’s a No victory, this would not have been enough. So much for the discouragement that will envelop the young, especially those who had voted Yes.

I’m afraid the side that pushed for a No vote has burnt its bridges and, on the morrow of a No win, will not be able to come up with some reassuring noises to the defeated side. There was a point where I and many others thought the No camp was against the JPO-Varist Bill but not necessarily against a properly-studied and prepared divorce bill some time in the future, but so much anti-divorce hype has been spent I very much doubt if the issue can be resurrected in our lifetime.

On the contrary, if it’s going to be a Yes win, I fear the fall-out will be even more bitter. I know these people: I was one of them.

In 1976, on the eve of the September general election, Church quarters began agitating about the Madonna of Fatima and the Great Secret.

I happened to be acting editor of Il-Ħajja and I wrote a leader pooh-poohing such crude attempts at influencing voters with religious fears. At that time, the power behind the paper was Mgr Edward Coleiro. Once the election was over (and the Church side lost), he stripped me of everything: my full-time management of the press (with no experience but done with a great passion), my writing even about cinema. Anytime I had to write anything about Church matters I, then still a priest, had to go and show it to another priest (still alive).

If it’s a Yes win, the No camp will be vicious in defeat. They may not be as potent as they were in those days (let Henry Frendo tell what they did to him after the 1971 election). It will only be if the Yes win is consistent and really definite that will make the No camp stay quiet and digest and reflect upon what has happened and why.

Obviously, all the above will inevitably be translated on to the political level. In a way, yesterday’s referendum will have huge political undertones. I say that whichever side wins today, the man with the biggest problems will be Lawrence Gonzi. He loses if the No side wins, and he equally loses (or perhaps some more) if it’s a Yes win.

If the No side wins, Dr Gonzi may allow himself just a whisker of a satisfied grin but only where no one can see him. He would have outfoxed JPO and can now throw him to the dogs. It would also mean that the No side triumphed with a far superior strategy, although the strategists at the back were mainly non-party people.

But what about the thousands of PN sympathisers who broke away from the party on this issue and who feel antagonised by what the party and its leaders exemplify? Some tell you that in two years’ time people will forget and will revert back to party loyalties. I doubt that very much.

If it’s a Yes win, Dr Gonzi’s problems are unimaginable. For starters, he will have to pilot the people’s will through a deeply conservative Parliament where key members have already said that whatever the people will have voted they will be ruled only by their conscience.

A Yes win would mean that a new coalition has triumphed in the hustings, and that in a way it centres around Joseph Muscat. It would mean that the carefully-crafted No strategy was thrown out by the electorate, and that the same electorate will most probably throw out a Gonzi strategy based on the same principles and strategies. The way Dr Gonzi governs and the way the No camp attempted to win are parallel. Once one would have lost, the other will be well on its way to losing as well.

There will inevitably be calls for Dr Gonzi’s resignation, as it will by then be amply clear he may not be the best person to lead the party in the coming election. Either way, it will be clear (I have been saying it for years now) that the party needs a huge shake-up and there will be no better time to do it than after this electoral debacle.

I said two weeks ago that a No win would mean that a portion of Labour voters would have deserted the Labour pointer just as they did on EU accession. That may be so, but this time there’s no trauma like there was in 2003 and the party’s leadership is not threatened by an eventual No victory. Whereas the PN leadership, given the particular circumstances, will be very threatened by a Yes victory.

Much as they would like to burn JPO at the stake, both in the eventuality of a No win but also in case it’s a Yes win, for all his rough corners and his faults and mistakes, JPO could end up by having the last laugh on Dr Gonzi.

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