We have all read reams of comments on last Saturday’s referendum result, but most seem to have translated the numbers on to the partisan political level while there has, of course, been all this hue and cry over whether the House will say Aye or Nay to the proposed bill.
Both are very valid subjects, but I feel that the main significance of Saturday’s result is still escaping most.
If we were to look longer term and put everything in proper focus, we can readily see that the result of the referendum can truly be described as historical. It was the passage of the ford for the people of Malta, the defining moment when a nation grew up from being a docile and obedient child into the maturity of an adult, a rite of passage that has long been coming.
The No camp put up a very perceptive bill-board (I have already remarked on it) claiming that a Yes vote would be a ‘step in the dark’. I had commented this was the billboard the No to EU camp should have put up, but didn’t. I remember commenting a few days after that referendum that indeed for the majority of the people of Malta to vote for EU membership was indeed courageous and a step in the dark.
So too was voting for the introduction of divorce. But the Maltese went ahead and did so, against all the nay-sayers, and against the dire predictions of the church and religious leaders.
It was indeed a rite of passage, a national growing up. A sloughing-off of the robes of childhood.
Much has been made, or is still being made, by the church camp about the thousands who either did not bother to pick up their votes or else did not bother to go and vote on 28 May.
It seems there are surprisingly many who have the same mind-set that Alfred Sant exhibited the day after the EU referendum when he claimed that his contrary proposal of a ‘partnership with the EU’ had won.
That was laughed out of court when we all started to joke that even the dead at the cemetery must have voted against EU membership, and that the biggest constituency was at Addolorata.
This time the figures were even more clear and dramatic – had more gone and voted No, the No side would have won. Mgr Gouder was quite right to fulminate against those who did not turn up. But if 20,775 did not collect their voting document and if 71,691 did not turn up to vote and if 2,173 cast an invalid vote, that must surely be a signal all these 94,639 sent. They could have easily voted either way, but chose not to.
Maybe, just maybe, some of them were young people who gave up on their country and expected the No vote to win, as we were all expecting. Maybe they were perplexed persons and couldn’t decide.
Whatever the case, only 107,973 out of a total eligible voters 325,157, voted against divorce. The rest, 217,184, disregarded threats of mortal sin, hell fire, earthquakes and the pressure of the church and did not feel that strongly against divorce to vote against it. 122,547 voted positively for a divorce legislation as presented by JPO and Evarist Bartolo.
Just to remain on the figures side, the highest vote on either side was the No vote in Gozo with 12,707 votes, followed by three Yes votes (11,762 in the third district, Fgura, Żejtun, Marsascala, 11,148 in the second district , Cottonera, Żabbar, Xgħajra, and 11,131 in the fifth district, Birżebbuġa, Kirkop, Marsaxlokk, Mqabba, Qrendi, Safi and Żurrieq) and a rather distant No vote (10,411 in the eleventh district (Mosta, Mdina, Attard, Balzan).
Correlating these figures to the normal partisan results obtained in general elections, the second, third and fifth districts normally turn up a Labour majority while both Gozo and the eleventh districts normally come up with a PN majority.
But the ninth, tenth and twelfth districts, which normally deliver a PN majority, this time supported the Yes vote.
That can only mean something – that at least in these districts the PN vote was split with some voting on the Yes side against the clear indications by the party and its leaders.
Hence the dilemma which enveloped the PN parliamentary group following the results. There was the dilemma posed by Austin Gatt (characteristically jumping the gun on his leader and on the entire parliamentary group) and declaring, quite coherently that since he had voted No on Saturday, he would vote No when the bill came up to vote.
Hence the entire palaver across the country whether the Representatives were indeed representing their constituency (in which case the Gozo representatives must side with the No vote) or the electorate as a whole, given that, as stated clearly by Dr Gonzi in that ‘face from the dead’ appearance he made on TV on Sunday morning to announce the result, the ‘people had decided’.
All this has come from what I like to call lack of proper attention to ‘the beginner’s guide to legislating’.
Our legislative iter is normally quite smooth: the executive power proposes a bill, this is discussed in the House, possibly with amendments, and is then voted upon by the House in at least four stages – first and second readings, committee stage and third reading.
Here we have a bill presented by a cross-party team. Such has been the confusion in this matter that the bill has most probably not been vetted by the Attorney General’s office as all legislative proposals are. It is because of this confusion (or rather, let us call it this novel way of legislating) that the confusion arose which left 2,800 voters who had turned 18 but whose names were not yet listed on the electoral register, unable to vote.
In normal circumstances, a government would sound out its parliamentary majority on a draft legislation and any internal opposition would be tackled there. This stage too is missing because the JPO-Varist bill was presented in a rather take-it-or-leave-it manner.
To my understanding, there has been no attempt at mediation (when all sides were insisting on the importance of mediation in family disputes) and readers may further remember that this private members’ motion was followed up by a second one which decided, unilaterally, on the referendum date and on the question as it was to be asked. And this was rammed through by a parliamentary vote in which two PN MPs – JPO and Jesmond Mugliett – stood and voted with the unanimous LP parliamentary group.
So now we have a referendum result which is more than clear and which is consultative only in name. And we have a bill that has not yet been discussed in the House but about which, it would seem, the sole national interest lies in the final vote and its modalities.
Maybe that is how things should be, from now on. Maybe the executive branch should restrict itself to executing the decisions of the House rather than doing the proposing bit as well. This issue is sure breaking new ground in legislative matters.
More than worrying ourselves with Will there be a majority in the House or will the bill be thrown out? questions, it would probably be more useful to try and map out the impact Saturday’s ‘passage of the ford’ will have on two important institutions in the country.
On the side of the Nationalist Party, a look at Dr Gonzi’s ashen face when he announced the result told it all. Here was the man who had lost set, match and game.
He had made us believe that he won the 2008 election when in fact he had lost some 10,000 votes (and would have lost both the election and more votes had Alfred Sant announced the JPO issue at Mistra just a week or two before he did). He then lost the European Parliament elections and then the local council elections, but bluffed his way out.
Two years before the next general election, successive negative polls show him trailing Joe Muscat.
His face has become haunted, gaunt, serious, worried wrinkles now surround the face which used to smile but which now grimaces.
His government has been whittled down to a rump of devotees, ministers who don’t rock boats and many times not so efficient or capable persons.
He may have thought he was prudent in the referendum campaign but instead his silence allowed so many weirdoes to come out and campaign for a No vote (not that there were no weirdoes on the other side, as well).
Whatever it may bleat about media spin, the No camp was all fear and terror and extrapolation of figures and scenarios that had nothing to do with the issue (such as the portrayal of children as the victims of divorce, when in fact they are the victims of broken families, divorce or no divorce; or the issue that what was being proposed was a ‘no fault’ divorce, when so many people can tell them what a fault separation really means). The No camp was unable to decide whether it was against divorce in principle or whether it was against the JPO-Varist bill or whether it was against divorce for now.
Dr Gonzi, whatever he might say, did not just lose the divorce referendum. He is now a leader with a very limited appeal, appealing to just the church-going core group of voters, with a limited team around him.
He may try over the coming two years to broaden out his party’s appeal by adding some token figures from the Yes campaign but I seriously doubt if the people who voted Yes will ever trust him again. They may abstain, if they do not feel like moving on to the other side, but Dr Gonzi has outlived his appeal. In normal circumstances, his party’s leaders would do to him as the Conservative grandees did to Margaret Thatcher – they would go round and tell him there is no way he is electable.
That, of course, will not happen.
In times of crisis, real leaders emerge. Dr Gonzi was fine when he was seeing off the internal Opposition, and when the Libyan crisis erupted. He has managed the country’s economy rather well in times of crisis. But in this divorce crisis he was hemmed in by what he saw as his religious convictions which could never allow him to budge an inch from a No position.
The other institution this referendum result will have an impact upon is the church.
I do not mean to condemn or crucify.
The church must ask itself what kind of church was rejected by the majority of those who voted. Whether this was one church or rather a collection of churches side by side, ranging from Bible-bashing to prayer groups.
It will take time for the church to adjust to the new reality of a more adult Malta that has crossed the ford and that is very different from what it looks like from the altar on Sundays.
Fortunately for it (it may have other ideas) the church is broad-based enough to accept people who have voted Yes to Sunday Mass, broad-based enough to tone down the crusading harangues of late, broad-based enough to find other points of convergence with many areas of the country – such as, I suggest, helping out the poor, healing troubled souls, promoting reconciliation.
In the badly-managed note of reconciliation that the church unwisely issued last Saturday, and more unwisely trusted to an embargo note to be kept hidden until the close of voting, the church sloughed off the exaggerations and crudities its members committed over the past weeks.
In that, even when it was being kicked by most of public opinion, the blogs and Facebook, it was larger and more understanding than a Nationalist Party which still cannot come to terms with its reduced base and limited appeal.
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