The vote on the Second Reading of the Bill to introduce divorce legislation to Malta on 13 July marked a historic day for the country. The final vote on the Third Reading on 25 July will see the Bill enacted into Maltese law, thus finally overturning the gross injustice of refusing remarriage to people who have been legally separated.

The vote on the Second Reading struck a significant blow for freedom and justice in Malta. It reflected the democratic imperative – the sovereign will of the people as expressed so decisively in the referendum called by the government on 28 May and now respected by an overwhelming majority of individual Members of Parliament.

But Malta’s Prime Minister, virtually his whole Cabinet and a gaggle of mostly Nationalist Members of Parliament were not among those who honoured their promise to listen to the wishes of the people and to respect the view of the majority. The Bill has passed not because of the Prime Minister, but in spite of him and his Cabinet.

If Parliament had debated the joint Private Members’ Bill as they would any other Bill brought before it without calling a referendum, the actions of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues on so-called “grounds of conscience” might have been understandable, or at least explicable. But this was not the case, and no amount of self-indulgent cries of “conscience” can paper over the cracks in their position. These same people – led by the Prime Minister and his Cabinet – had been the first to advocate the holding of a referendum on the spurious grounds that it had not been included in any party’s manifesto.

Having defaulted on the responsibilities for which they were elected to Parliament in favour of surrendering the decision to the electorate at large through a referendum − literally by dumping it in our laps − they also ipso facto abdicated any right to plead “conscience” when it came to the vote in Parliament last Wednesday. On the contrary, by taking that vital first step to invite the people’s wishes on the way ahead, they effectively handed over any further ownership, influence or choice in the matter.

The commitment of Members of Parliament to the very essence of democracy – that the will of the majority, by whatever margin, should prevail − was the overriding issue. It has not been respected by the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues and no amount of Orwellian double-speak about “respecting the will of the people” (because the Bill has been passed since other MPs did indeed respect it) while still voting in practice against that very will, can expunge their betrayal of the people’s wishes. Instead of enhancing democratic values, what we have witnessed is the Prime Minister and virtually all his Cabinet bringing their offices into disrepute and wilfully conniving at an act that opens up a democratic deficit.

Respect for Parliament – and specifically respect for this Cabinet – is already at a low ebb following the unilateral, unannounced and undebated pay increase these same people had awarded themselves several years ago. The way this sizeable rump of Cabinet ministers and mostly Nationalist Members of Parliament has flouted the will of the people now only serves further to undermine respect for them. One cannot help feeling, with regret, that politically these may now be dead men walking.

This episode in Malta’s parliamentary history should lead us to draw four main lessons. The first is: Parliament should resolve never again to abdicate its responsibilities on a social issue of this nature. Whether the issue is divorce, or IVF treatment, or ‘gay marriages’ (civil partnerships), or sex education, it is Parliament’s duty to consider these issues and to legislate accordingly. That is the purpose for which we vote them into the House and we do not expect them to pass those responsibilities back to us when the going gets tough.

The second lesson is: The urgent need to re-calibrate Church-State relations in Malta. The steady decline over the last 50 years of one of Malta’s great institutions is a matter for concern. It has been mainly caused by the Maltese Church’s inability to adapt to refreshing winds of change and, as became patently clear in the course of the divorce referendum campaign, this was exacerbated by having too few men of calibre to fill posts in the higher reaches of the Church. The Archbishop needs to conduct a root and branch review of his Curia and to bring in younger, better-educated priests who are closer to the pulse of modern Malta.

But, most importantly, there must be a new concordat between Church and State that does away once and for all with the “twinning” (in the impeccable words of Monsignor Charles Vella, the founder of the Cana Movement and an outstanding priest) that currently exists.

Without the need to re-write Article 2 of our Constitution, there is nonetheless an urgent requirement to overturn the special privileges needlessly accorded to the Church for ecclesiastical tribunals under the Marriage Act in 1995 and to bring these tribunals under the jurisdiction of the Family Court.

It must also be made abundantly plain that the Church cannot act as a state within a state. A good example of this has been the recently introduced, and long overdue, law to ensure cases of clerical abuse are dealt with under the criminal law, not under its formerly secretive and arcane procedures. The discussions that may shortly arise on IVF treatment, sex education and civil partnerships should also be conducted at arm’s length, as they would be with any other interested lobby group. A clearer separation of Church and State needs to be established.

The third lesson is: The government must stop merely paying lip service to strengthening the family and behave more pro-actively. That means investing more funding into supporting families, into preparing couples for marriage, including those who intend to marry by civil contract, and the greater provision of mediation, counselling and reconciliation services, not only for those whose marriages are in trouble and might be saved, but also to underpin the new legal framework for those marriages that have failed irretrievably. All these measures will cost money, but if the government is truly serious about reversing the shocking increase in family breakdown, it must be prepared to act and to invest more resources.

The final lesson is: In a modern democracy, the force of rational argument will invariably prevail. Any party that aspires to power in Malta must in future take this extremely healthy development into account. The old tribal red-blue lines of demarcation are becoming blurred. A more educated, questioning and discerning electorate was able to see that rational argument, logic, civil rights, justice, charity and compassion (the last two words formerly the preserve of the Maltese Church) should prevail. The intellectual bankruptcy of argument adduced by the No campaign, which failed to engage at all with the realities of the pain and suffering of thousands of people in broken marriages, was exposed. The people drew their own conclusions and their will has ultimately prevailed – for the greater public good of society.