A year has now passed since that particularly heated, five-week divorce referendum campaign, which, seemingly against all odds, at least at the campaign’s inception, the ‘Yes’ vote in the end, won the day.

The campaign itself was a particularly nasty one rife with personal attacks, replete with misinformation and disinformation, spiritual scaremongering, and absurd accusations.

But with all the scaremongering and ugliness now safely put behind like so much water under the bridge, the healing process that all stakeholders had said was needed has now, albeit silently, also been put behind us. There have been no recriminations and any open wounds, at least as far as the public at large is concerned, have been healed.

Looking back now, a year down the road, there has been no headlong rush by the population at large to rush for divorces, no floodgates have been opened, Maltese families are still going as strong as ever and society is not crumbling underfoot.

In fact, fewer couples than had been predicted by many actually filed for divorce since it was enshrined in the law back in October. Less than 500 applications have, in fact, been filed and the courts have granted half of those so far.

But, truth be told, it would not matter had there not been a single divorce registered, what is important is that the option is now there, that the fundamental civil right is now enshrined in Maltese law. That, at the end of the day, is all that ever really mattered.

A full year down the road, those of us who had campaigned for the introduction of divorce legislation can look back at last year’s antics and breathe a sigh of relief, while those who had stood against can seek solace in the fact that the good of society has not been undermined with the introduction of what is, after all, a civil right accorded to citizens of every country in the western world.

A Lockerbie inquiry

With the death last Sunday of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, the victims’ families and the world runs the risk of the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing going to the grave with him.

The man died protesting his innocence, despite having dropped a planned appeal against his conviction so as to clear the way for his release and return to Libya under Scottish law, which grants compassionate release for the terminally ill.

That, were it to come to pass, would also be a gross injustice to Malta, whose good name has been tarnished over the last 23 years as the point of departure of the lethal luggage that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland on 21 December 1988, killing 270 people.

Al-Megrahi, some say, was Lockerbie’s 271st victim but that will perhaps never be ascertained beyond any reasonable doubt unless a fully-fledged inquiry into the case is carried out on the basis of findings of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which found enough evidence to grant al-Megrahi his appeal, as well as new evidence that has surfaced since then.

Nor will Malta’s name ever be cleared by a court of law over its apparent role, as the bomb’s point of departure, in the tragedy. The country has been dogged over the last 23 years by the Lockerbie prosecution’s contention that the bomb responsible for one of the most heinous terrorist acts in history began its deadly journey on an Air Malta flight out of Luqa Airport.

Indeed, the only hope of answers for the families on both sides of the Atlantic, which hold very different views on the guilt of the convicted bomber, of learning the truth lies in the possibility of an independent inquiry into the case.

Evidence presented during the trial that the bomb had originated at Luqa Airport was, it has been said time and time again, some of the weakest of the entire proceedings, and Malta has a good case to bring to the European Union for such an inquiry.

Malta also deserves some concrete answers about its alleged role in the tragedy as the point of origin, and it should be lobbying at all levels for an investigation that would, albeit outside a court of law, at least hear the new evidence and arguments that were to have been presented by the defence team at the appeal, which mainly dealt with the weaknesses in the Maltese testimony that led to the conviction.

The government however, has, in the past, brushed the concept aside for reasons that remain unclear. Calls for such an inquiry are, however, growing in the UK, where al-Megrahi’s innocence is a wider held view than it is on the other side of the Atlantic.

What is beyond doubt is that the Lockerbie tragedy has left an indelible stain on Malta’s reputation – a stain that will remain, irrespective of whether an inquiry into the Lockerbie case and the evidence that was to be heard at appeal is undertaken, and regardless of what the outcome of such an enquiry would be.

Malta, for many, will always be the place from where the Lockerbie bomb started its fateful journey, and the country should seek the ways and means with which to clear its name.

With al-Megrahi, the world is still very much split on whether it was a case of justice served or justice denied. It is only an inquiry that could, perhaps, allow al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie victims, and the truth to rest in peace.