Eddie Fenech Adami is the man most of Malta, even his adversaries, respect and honour. Or rather was.

He was the beacon of hope in the bad days of the 1980s facing up to a regime which bordered on the despotic. For five whole years, from the night in December 1981 when his party had election victory stolen from under its noses by the ‘seats, not votes’ trick, every weekend he organised a mass meeting which led to the slim election victory in 1987.

His first term as prime minister, and also his second, opened up Malta’s claustrophobic economy and brought in much needed liberalisation.

Then he lost the 1996 election when the EEC refused to let an unprepared Malta in and when the obnoxious VAT was being brought in. However, Alfred Sant who brought about his defeat, had his own internal demons, another elderly statesman called Dom Mintoff, who proceeded to throw to the ground the honour he had accumulated over the years and who brought down the Sant government.

So Eddie, as the chanting crowds called him, was back at Castille and this time it was full speed ahead to EU membership, obtained through a referendum and a subsequent election.

Then Eddie became Edward, the Moses who led Malta out of the wilderness, exchanged Castille for San Anton and Edward spent the next four years as President of the Republic.

Now this man is a pensioner, who should be living in retirement, surrounded by his family and the gratitude of a grateful country.

Instead, typically of the man, he has become a born-again Zealot, and the recent divorce referendum and its aftermath have propelled him back to the national stage. While other leaders of the No vote have accepted the defeat, not so Eddie.

He is now saying that the referendum result must be confirmed by the next general election.

It would seem, on the face of it, this is only fair, as this was done, by him, in 2003 regarding EU accession.

Only a foolish and superficial onlooker would see it like this. First of all, that general election was carried out a month and a week after the referendum. In this case, the next election is due in two years’ time, unless Lawrence Gonzi does the unthinkable and goes to the country. There is not much hope of Dr Gonzi doing that, thank heavens for that.

One would think that as a private person, Dr Fenech Adami is perfectly entitled to express his opinion, even though past presidents usually stay away from public controversy. But there is a special heinousness in his suggestion and it is this which leads us to declare that his behaviour is unseemly and in bad taste.

The EU is one issue and divorce is quite a different issue. The EU is a political issue and can thus be resolved by a political means, that is a general election. But divorce, as we have seen over the very bruising referendum campaign is something else, in which religious opinions figure at the fore. We have just come out of a referendum campaign which resurrected the intolerance of the past politico-religious wars and Dr Eddie wants to push us back into the mother of all battles.

There’s more. It is aimed at the Nationalist Party which, according to what its Secretary General told this paper’s sister Sunday issue, is seeking to put the referendum divisiveness behind it and to try and resurrect itself as a party of inclusiveness where liberals can coexist with people for whom the Catholic religion is a strong issue.

There’s even more. Given that, on estimate, some 30% of PN supporters voted Yes, such a proposal as Dr Fenech Adami is making, would be supported by the PN majority. This would turn the coming general election into a confessional battle in which an anti-divorce PN would battle it out against a pro-divorce Labour. In other words, the next election would be fought once again on confessional grounds, just as the 1962 one was, with all the pain and divisiveness it caused.

There is much more that can be said about this ill-considered suggestion but the best way to perhaps describe it is in Italian – ‘morto Sansone e tutti i Filistei’. Is Dr Fenech Adami trying to bring about the historical collapse and downfall of the party he so gloriously led over so many years?