Does anyone feel like reading about the divorce referendum QUESTION?
This is a piece I wrote for The Malta Independent last week. I felt I had to write it, because parliament had just spent 29 hours debating the QUESTION for the divorce referendum, even as efforts intensified to persuade the United Nations Security Council to vote in favour of a resolution for action nextdoor in Libya.
The UN Security Council vote took place the day this article was published, and the non-issue of the divorce referendum question seemed by then even more nonsensical and irrelevant then that I didn’t bother to upload my newspaper column here as I usually do.
Some of you might feel like reading about it now, when our parliament’s engagement in full-on displacement activity under the black cloud of a huge crisis seems even more clearly to have taken place in a parallel universe.
JEFFREY AND JOSEPH FIDDLE WHILE ROME BURNS
This newspaper column was published in The Malta Independent last Thursday.
With divorce on parliament’s schedule, it has to be discussed, but it’s painful to see that some politicians are taking the matter of the referendum question far more seriously than what’s happening in Libya.
To all except the intellectually challenged, the pathologically fixated or those with a vested interest in avoiding the subject of Gaddafi, there is no question as to which issue is the more pivotal to Malta’s present and future.
The unfortunate sight of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando conducting himself on the matter of the divorce question like a starving terrier with a bone has been completely off-putting, not that I could be put off any further at this late stage.
Equally, watching Joseph Muscat seize this opportunity and cling to it as a way of distracting attention from his failure to speak up about Libya has been….well, nothing more or less than I expected.
The man cannot formulate a view about Libya, still less voice it, and not because the lingering suspicion might turn out to be true that Muammar Gaddafi bankrolled the Malta Labour Party.
It is because Muscat is fundamentally a small man with a small mind, incapable of seeing the bigger picture – as evidenced by his five years of hindsight about EU membership, and his talk about tourism marketing campaigns as his sole reaction to the clamour for human rights and freedom in North Africa.
I disagree utterly with the prime minister on the matter of divorce, but he is right in saying that the referendum question which Jeffrey and Joseph, with a little help from their friends Jesmond and Evarist, have shoved down our throats.
The question is: “Do you agree with having the option of having divorce for married couples who have been separated for four years when there is no reasonable hope for reconciliation and when adequate maintenance is guaranteed and the children are cared for?”
It is wrong-headed and misleading, and could only have been drafted by a dentist, an architect, a Super One hack-turned-politician and a lecturer in communications who never even learned how to drive a car. This is not to cast aspersions on those professions in general, but there is a reason why the most vociferous opposition to this idiotic question has come from lawyers, and from people who cannot bear fudging and lack of precision in meaning and clarity in language, like me.
Unfortunately, the prime minister has been burdened with the accusation that he has objected to this question because – or so Malta Today and Pullicino Orlando have claimed – it is more likely to yield a Yes vote. Pullicino Orlando and Muscat are themselves accused of favouring the question for that same reason.
This seems likely to me, because I hardly think either of them is bothered about the whys and wherefores of divorce, but only about getting it through, and worries about ‘Las Vegas style divorce’ be damned.
Nobody with a clear mind could possibly come up with a question like that or fail to see the major holes in it. The problem clear-minded people have now been dumped with, thanks to the three Js, their friend Evarist and the mindless rank and file of the Labour parliamentary group, is whether we want to vote Yes (or No) to such a damn-fool question, or just stay away from the referendum altogether.
I’m tempted not to vote because I consider the question insulting. It is not what I believe at all, which is that if people are considered competent to take a decision on marriage then it follows that they are competent to take a decision on divorce.
If two people decide they want to divorce each other, then you can’t tell them ‘No, ta, you have to wait for four years.’ When people decide they want to get married, we don’t tell them they have to wait for four years to see whether they’re sure about it, and that is a far more serious decision, with greater consequences, than divorce. They have to wait only as long as the marriage banns are out, which is just a few weeks.
Some of the pro-divorce contingent might regard voting on this half-assed question as doing the necessary to get divorce legislation through, at least some form of divorce legislation.
Others might conclude that voting on the question would be a betrayal of their real opinion, which is best served by answering the far more sensible question:
‘Do you agree that Malta should have divorce legislation?’
This question is distinct and different from:
‘Do you agree with divorce?’
Referendums are not there to collect personal value judgements, but agreement or disagreement with proposed legislation or policy. It is perfectly possible to frown on divorce but at the same time see that legislation should be available for those who don’t feel the same way.
That the question to be forced on us has not been composed by a forensic mind is obvious at the outset, with the specification that this divorce they have in mind is going to be available to “married couples”. Really – as opposed to single people, one assumes. You cannot be divorced unless you are married and you are not a couple if you have been separated for four years.
This is the kind of messy thinking and clumsy writing that drives me up the wall. Am I going to vote for it? I have until 28 May to decide whether I want to compromise my self-respect by doing so. Resisting the temptation to use my ballot-pencil to correct the butchery of common sense and clarity, thereby rendering my vote invalid, will be tough.
Those MPs who opposed the question focussed on the fact that nobody can guarantee maintenance to anyone else, not even in marriage, let alone in divorce. But because all our politicians, down to the last man, appear to see divorce as something that men ‘do’ to women, not one of them challenged the question on far more serious matters.
Who exactly is going to pay maintenance to whom?
The referendum question appears to have been written with drop-jawed fools in mind. What maintenance are we talking about – maintenance for the children, or maintenance for the parent who looks after them? And if so, which parent and in what circumstances? If there are no children to be maintained, is the stay-at-home spouse to be kept in the manner to which she or he has been accustomed?
I don’t know whether to think this a cynical ploy which trades on the typical Maltese assumption that it is always men who initiate divorce in search of a better life with a younger woman (it is, in fact, more likely to be the wife) and that these abominable men will be forced to maintain their poor, weeping and abandoned wives, or whether Jeffrey, Jesmond, Joseph and Evarist are so typically Mediterranean and closed-minded that this is how they think themselves.
Yet here is a question that has taxed Europe and North America for decades: should a man be forced to maintain a woman who has said she doesn’t want him anymore and who is the one who initiated divorce proceedings?
Here is another one, which deals with more unusual circumstances, but circumstances which exist all the same: should a woman who works while her husband does not be forced to maintain him after divorce just as she has maintained him during marriage?
With equality written into our marriage laws, no man is going to be forced after divorce to maintain an ex-wife who is perfectly capable of working, even if he has maintained her until that point. But then again, the wife who runs off – and there are several – leaving her husband to raise the children will be obliged to maintain him, and them.
I heard nothing of this in the chaos of argument about the referendum question. Nor did I hear any politician sarcastically ask Jeffrey and Joseph why they didn’t include in the question guarantees on who gets to go on living in the family home. This is one of the biggest issues, if not actually the biggest, with divorce. It is the reason so many men in Britain, and women in the United States, end up homeless and living on the streets: they lose their home when they divorce and cannot afford to buy or rent another.
There is another point which I heard no politician bring up, and which is not clear in the question. Is the four-year separation requirement going to be mandatory even in cases where divorce is consensual? If so, then it is as fascistic as the current situation of not allowing people to divorce at all unless they do so overseas.
The thinking which underpins it is exactly the same: you were both old enough to know whether you wanted to marry (even though you were in your 20s at the time), but we don’t think you’re old enough to know whether you want to divorce (even though you’re now middle-aged). So we’re going to force you into a four-year cooling-off period.
In divorce legislation, mandatory periods of separation come into play only when the divorce is not consensual. One of the parties can refuse to sign the divorce papers throughout that period – in Britain it is two years, I believe – but after that the divorce just goes through automatically.
Now that the matter of the divorce referendum question has been settled to Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s satisfaction and that of the Labour leader, perhaps we can turn our minds to far more important matters which are about to consume us even as we fiddle about with various forms of displacement activity.
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A great article that is completly wasted on the Don Camillo/ Peppone mentality of some.
Very well written. Nevertheless. We have a substantial percentage of adults who it would seem very directly correlate “agreeing with divorce” to actively wishing for the separation of more couples.
They simply don’t get it that no reasonable person actually supports “divorce” per se.
So, since they are incapable of making the distinction, we must sugar the pill for these idiots, which I am convinced must make up from 60% upwards of the general population.
In the knowledge that if the outcome is as it should be, slightly imperfect legislation is in this case better than none at all, and more importantly always subject to review, a far simpler process for future legislators.
In Canada divorce is obtained after 1 year of separation and in Italy after 3 years. Ghax ma zidux xi sena ohra ukoll!
[Daphne – But only if one party refuses to sign the papers. If divorce is consensual, the process takes only as long as the administrative hassles require. The ‘separation’ requirement is not mandatory. It is in fact there for another reason altogether: to prevent one party from blocking the divorce. So if you are separated for X years, then you can’t block the divorce beyond that.]
Why is the subject of maintenance included in the question?
There are women who would never work in order to keep getting maintenance money from their husband even if he has got a new family of his own. This husband should maintain the ex wife till her last day of life.
What would the law state in these cases?
The law is an ass about this. You will be surprised at the various excuses men can come up with in the family court to avoid paying maintenance for an unwanted wife and existing children.
It includes declaring themselves bankrupt or unemployed. Sopra corna bastonate, then these men will demand maintenance from their wives if they are working. That would explain why so many women are officially unemployed.
I do not think that making divorce legal in Malta will do much to allievate the existing plight of the ‘innocent’ parties when a marriage breaks down.
[Daphne – Divorce is legal in Malta. This is not about making divorce legal. It is about making it possible to divorce here and not elsewhere. It is perfectly permissible (legal) to be Maltese, in Malta and divorced. The Public Registry registers divorces.]
I expressed myself poorly I’m afraid. I was referring to the introduction of divorce legislation in Malta. I am aware that divorce obtained abroad is recognized in Malta.
It is, of course, all a matter of priorities.
Which is the more important, addressing a sop to the divorce legislation and neutralising the issue in good time ahead of the next general election?
Or parliament urgently convening and bringing to the fore the more vital human issues related to the disappearances, torture, indiscriminate killings, and wholesale slaughter even now still being perpetated in Libya by good old friend and banker Muammar Gaddafi and his jolly people-friendly regime? Our MPs would then actually have to stand up and be counted, and be seen by their electorate for what they really are.
Parliament has shown itself unable to even render to the Libyan people Malta’s unequivocal moral support in their quest for freedom. When things did come to a serious crunch, parliament miserably failed to rise to the occasion. It is now plainly evident where the priorities of our parliamentarians lie.
http://www.rainews24.rai.it/it/news.php?newsid=151221
I have news for all those whiners who are making a national hobby out of worrying about nonexistent bomb threats from Gaddafi. They should stop worrying about Gaddafi and start concentrating seriously on scaring themselves sick with the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear fall-out that was reported to be reaching NEARBY Italy ANY DAY all the way from Japan.
Ma tarax li ir-radjazzjoni ma hiex ha tasal Malta? Ahna newtrali.
Good point, Dee. I recently e-mailed a former university classmate of mine who now lobbies for the nuclear energy industry in Washington, asking him what he thought about Fukushima. Just got his reply: ‘Atomic reactors are safe unless something bad happens’.
The death toll on Tuesday from fighting in Misrata, where pro-Gaddafi forces were reported to be using shells and snipers, was 17, a doctor tells AFP. Five children were among those killed, the doctor says.
The current stumbling block is that the coalition force is allowed to help civilians but not aid the rebels in hanging on to the towns they captured at the start of the rebellion. By the look of it, the rebel army has neither the professional knowhow nor the military hardware to achieve this.
The rebels, especially in Misurata, right now are begging for urgent help – humanitarian and military.
The coalition cannot help more with military assistance, not unless there is tangible Arab/Muslim aid. I cannot pricture this vital aid coming from countries who are hardly the paragon of democracy themselves. The coalition has no mandate to land troops on Libyan land and the present no-fly zone is not effective as hoped.
The coalition cannot afford to be seen taking sides in assisting to overthrow Gaddafi. That was not its mandate. Protecting Libyan civilians includes also those civilians living in Tripoli and other pro-Gaddafi towns whose lives currently depend literally on monkeying around in pro-Gaddafi rallies choeographed for TV.
It looks like a stalemate and more innocent lives are going to be lost.
I believe that the least Malta can do in these circumstances is to get the sick and the injured people from the liberated areas. Do not tell me that we cannot accept patients because Mater Dei is full; the Maltese government can arrive to an agreement to use St. Philip’s Hospital.
It’s not possible to fly patients to Malta and transport by ship takes too long. Patients in Benghazi are more likely to be transferred to Egypt.
While the fighting in Libya continues and while it is absolutely hideous that our politicians continue to avoid the topic and not give it its appropriate weight, our life here in Malta has to go on and therefore, national issues need to be discussed especially when considering that we are on the eve of an (unnecessary) referendum.
In a couple of days Eddie Fenech Adami gained 100 points with his views on the Libya situation and then immediately lost them with his pathetic statement on divorce.
“Eddie Fenech Adami … then immediately lost them with his pathetic statement on divorce.”
So true!
I think the divorce issue has been mishandled by many of the polticians, and it is hardly fair (as stated in this article) that Joseph, Evarist and Jeffrey bear all the brunt of all this.
Austin Gatt’s typical over-the-top reaction, Tonio Fenech and his Ferrari analogy, Edwin Vassallo and his nonsensical ramblings, the Prime Minister’s attempt to shoot down the divorce bill before the referendum itself; let’s face it, a healthy debate on such issues can never occur in our parliament, unless the current generation of politicians changes.
Though I’m opposed to having divorce decided by referendum, and though I think the referendum question is a mess, I do think that in the current circumstances and in the way this debate has evolved, this is probably the best bet at getting through divorce legislation.
Let’s face it: a politician or, more so, a party will only dismiss the outcome of a consultative referendum at their peril. When healthy debate can’t occur without invoking overly-religious and utterly bigotted ways of thinking, I’d rather take a Machiavellian approach towards all this: the end justifies the means.
Great article as usual! Has anyone thought that because our attention is drawn to what’s happening in the Middle East, one could, just maybe, doubt the legitimacy of the referendum result – on grounds that the information campaign wouldn’t have sufficiently achieved its goal?
This ought to be considered, particularly when one remembers Sant’s 2003 exercise in creative thinking; I’m referring to the one which would have put Edward DeBono to shame had it not been devoid of any rational basis.
[Daphne – Sant’s? What about the present leader of the Opposition? That was his stance, too.]
I agree! Then that should be an even greater cause of concern
The only possible, albeit very remote, way of introducing divorce legislation in a ‘Talibanised’ country such as ours is to sugar-coat and distort it as much as possible in an effort to make it look ‘immoral but tolerable’ in the eyes of the ignorant, selfish and egotistical majority. And the pro divorce campaigners know this very well and based their proposed bill and campaign on this very premise.
The question itself is yes, vague, but the liberal and free thinkers out there have to make do with what they have if they want to see divorce legislation introduced in one way or the other because not voting at all would be akin to kissing divorce legislation good bye for a long time.
In a truly free country divorce would be introduced unreservedly and not the way the pro divorce brigade is proposing it. But this is little Malta and half a loaf is better than none.
It is the Prime Minster’s fault at the end of the day.
Many MPs are accomplices, mainly because they might upset the Roman Catholic Church and their parishioners would be directed not to vote for them.
This referendum is a joke.
Divorce legislation ought to have been completed ages ago.
For many years now, divorces obtained elsewhere have been registered at the Public Registry in Malta. We are experiencing a holy war when we should be unanimous in giving the opportunity of a new life to others in our community.
This is what is really immoral, and at this time when we ought to concentrate on the tragedy unfolding in neighboring countries.
I agree that Malta ought to have divorce legislation. However, I entirely disagree on conditioning divorce upon a four-year waiting period.
Many couples may separated psychologically and maritally for years before they even understand or admit that there is something “wrong” or “dysfunctional” about their marriage. Furthrmore, they may have struggled for years to make the dysfunctional marriage to work, without much success, perhaps including (hopefully) couples or individual psychological counselling. All this is likely to occur long before there would even be a physical or legal separation.
So now, somebody wants to impose another minimum four-year sentence in marital hell before “granting” a divorce. All of the legal parameters, for either legal separation or divorce, don’t happen over night or in the moment one sufficient party of the marriage realizes (perhaps in horror, fear, or desperation) that he or she does not have a marriage, with or without children.
As for the referendum question, I can’t morally vote “No.” But, with “yes” conditioned by all of its conditionals, I cannot find the conscience to vote yes: the four-years is fascist; and operationally defining the other conditions such as “guaranteeing” maintanence (for ex-spouse) and child support always can be enforced by the court’s judgements on the matter. But how can the “present” civil divorce ever be made conditional on the future?
Since the referendum is consultative and not binding, its only force will be if there is a majority “yes.” If not, then the decision for this legislature is finished.
Indeed, although I am in favour of divorce legislation, and my conscience demands its availability as an option, equally I do not agree with the effort to make divorce conditional in terms of the stated referendum question.
For this moral dilemma, I am contemplating registering my disgust, not by marking “no” (because I support divorce legislation), but by writing through the referendum question and thereby invalidating my vote.
A significant number of such invalidated votes also carries meaning, if neither “no” nor “yes” votes obtain an absolute majority (50% + 1 vote) of the votes cast [a la reasoning of Alfred Sant during the EU referendum].
Actually, Alfred Sant had reasoned relative to the number of eligible voters, not relative to the number of votes cast. I am arguing relative to the votes cast–not for Sant’s formerly irrational rationale.
I should have also made clear another aspect of the “four-year” waiting period. Such a prolonged period actually may work to put marriages in jeopardy. Couples may prematurely separate and push themselves towards divorce when they realize that the future waiting period looks bleak.
If one struggles, honestly, with one’s marriage and then comes to the conclusion that it is finished or nonexistent, one may be more likely to struggle sufficiently with marriage resolution until determining that there may be none, if a waiting period is irrelevant, except for the natural course of events and mature decision-making.
“Mr Darmanin came close to Taylor after she broke up from Richard Burton in 1976.” http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110323/local/peter-darmanin-describes-time-with-liz-taylor-as-an-experience
Is this the Peter Darmanin who was PN finance officer for a couple of decades? I wonder how close he ‘came’ to Liz Taylor. Who writes this stuff for Times of Malta? Do they even have a basic working knowledge of English? Or are they trying to tell us something….?
[Daphne – Of course not! That’s another Peter Darmanin entirely – the Peter Darmanin who owns San Giuliano restaurant. The advertising business mentioned in the piece is Crown Advertising, in which he has long since sold his shareholding.]
After the PN came to power in 1987, Peter Darmanin (PN) had a weekly column in il-Mument titled “Imhatra li diga nsejt”, about various exploits under the MLP. Some satirical paper had the picture of Darmanin (PN) saying, “Mhux jien kont li rqadt ma Elizabeth Taylor”, while under it, a rather distraught Liz Taylor was pictured saying, “Imhatra li diga nsejt.”
I find it difficult to get my head around this separation/divorce thing. So after 15 years of marriage, throughout which I worked my ass off and amassed a sizeable fortune, my wife who has never worked suddenly decides she wants a separation and takes me to the cleaners.
Plus I have to maintain her till she or I leaves this earth; she gets the house, the kids and half my money, even though I didn’t want the separation/divorce. So half of my money will now go to somebody else’s children if she has more. Separation and divorce are immoral, and not from a religious view-point.
A contract is a contract. If my wife broke her part of the contract then she should not be entitled to anything, she should just feck off and earn her own money.
Dunque: kif se tivvota? Iva jew le?
Iva bla kondixins
Jien se niddikjara li jien newtrali u ma nidhol fl-ebda konflitt li jista’ jinvolvi l-Pontifical Vatican Air Force fl-airspace tal-villa ta’ Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.
Jien se niddikjara li jien “prudenti.”
Are there more Nationalist voters who would vote Labour to get divorce than there are Labour voters who would vote Nationalist to keep divorce out? How many floaters want divorce?
[Daphne – Your question is irrelevant. Labour leader Joseph Muscat has committed himself to a free vote on divorce. That means he can’t include divorce legislation in his party manifesto for the 2013 election. Once a party puts something in its electoral programme, every candidate who stands on the party ticket is deemed to agree with it – and that means voting with the whip, not a free vote, because it represents a pact with the electorate.]
http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2011/03/13/gps.china.flex.cnn.html
Libyan air force no longer a fighting force: Britain
LONDON, March 23, 2011 (AFP) – Libya’s air force “no longer exists as a fighting force” following international coalition air strikes, a top British military officer was quoted as saying Wednesday by British media.
You make a perfectly valid point on the ridiculously detailed referendum question. However the fact remains that in this enlightened island of ours, opinion polls continuously show a strong No vote to the more logical question “Do you agree with divorce being introduced in Malta “?
Whilst the Yes vote seems to fare much better when presented with a detailed question similar to that used in the successful Irish divorce referendum. The other two options on the table were the PM’s idea to first debate divorce in Parliament were believe it or not all opinion polls resulted that it would be easily voted down before even going to the people, or the PL could have, if it so wished, proposed a counter motion to hold a divorce referendum with a simple yes or no to divorce question.
This would most probably have been approved despite JPO’s resistance to Las Vagas style divorce, however it would stand little chance in a referendum.
So if this tiresome referendum question is the only chance there is to finally rid Malta of yet an other piece of legislation which belongs solely to the Church’s laws and has no place in the laws of the state, than so be it.
Now let’s get straight back to Libya.
Are the non-working wives entitled to a pension if the husband dies after the divorce?
[Daphne – Ah, now that’s the tricky one that Jeffrey and Ev left out of the referendum question. Obviously not.]
The question as is has to be accepted whether we agree or not. Strictly speaking, anybody who does not exactly agree with any condition in the divorce question should vote NO. I changed my mind and will vote NO as I do not agree on two.
Does anybody believe that if the referendum passes, the eventual legislation will require another referendum if say, in 10 years time, parliament wishes to amend any of the four conditions, however slight.
If I am not mistaken this is a non-binding referendum. If this is the case, than it is wasting precious hard-earned taxpayer money. Addio recession, oil prices, North Africa turmoil etc..
To start off with, let’s have a referendum about whether we should convert our island into a secular society. There would be religious freedom . We can maybe then move onto the next issue of understanding that religious faith does not have a monopoly on empathy, virtue, high morals and decent ethics. Then our elected representatives could start using their brain unshackled by deeply ingrained fears mainly instilled by religious indoctrination.
It’s leaving yourself wide open to ridicule when you oppose splitting up families via divorce but are happy to do it via annulment. But a lot of people hold the church in such high regard that they don’t care about the duplicity.
Here is possibly possibly good news regarding that:
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/23/religion-to-go-extinct-in-9-countries-experts-predict/?hpt=T2
I wonder where Malta stands in that respect.
As religion declines, it is replaced by Xarabank.
I don’t know which is worse.
Gaddafi famously surrounds himself with a female guard. This is the wedding video of Huda, a nonentity who rose to ‘fame’ by currying favour with Gaddafi. She comes in at about 4’0″ and sits next to Gaddafi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChblZV2OYSI
This is how Huda earned Gaddafi’s favour – she helped to kill an innocent man by holding onto his legs when he was hung.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8363587/Huda-the-executioner-Libyas-devil-in-female-form.html
Let’s have another referendum:
“Do you agree that referendum questions should be kept simple, including this one, and that married couples should be granted the option of having divorce after four years unless they were married by an Elvis lookalike in Las Vegas, in which case the time period is reduced to four days, with the proviso that children are properly fed and that toddlers have their nappies changed by any of the male or female parents, unless the said parents are Elvis lookalikes or are Las Vegas croupiers, barmen, bouncers or are otherwise involved in any activity pertaining to any movie featuring Elvis Presley?”
I think that in terms of electioneering a ‘no’ win will mostly damage the PN and make PL and AD very happy. What would the PN say to the liberal electors and those who need divorce legislation in the next general election, promise to resume discussion on a divorce legislation?
A couple of things that have been bugging me for some time and although off topic are more important than the inconveniences being experienced in North Africa and, dare I say, even the divorce question:
1. Why does a ‘barrel’ of oil translate into ‘barmil’ rather than ‘kartell’? Did we have oversize buckets back then when oil first started being traded?
2. Why do I keep seeing on TVM ‘Dan il-programm fih tqeghid tal-prodott’ (sorry if I got the spelling wrong). What the heck is that supposed to mean?
[Daphne – Product placement (companies pay for exposure of their product on shows/in films), translated literally.]
Il-Partit Laburista – Partit tal-Futur
Report on Maltastar.com today 23rd March 2011
“October 6, 2011
Nouri Mesmari turned himself to the French secret service and according to the Italians; he masterminded the revolution against Gaddafi. The document was leaked to Italian newspaper Libero.’\”
Yes a sense of perspective is good, however it doesn’t mean that we should stop discussing other important national issues.
True, the divorce issue has little bearing on the economy and the general direction of the country, however it says a hello of a lot about the people running the country. I cringe every time I recall the arguments made by the PM, Austin, the two Tonios, Edwin, Beppe, Jason, Charlo et al in the divorce debate. All of a sudden my confidence in these people’s ability to think straight and reason things out rationally has decreased drastically.
On the other hand small credit to Joseph Muscat for having the courage to state his personal beliefs about the subject, but a big thumbs down for not having the balls to go the whole way and say that divorce legislation will be included in the next PL manifesto.
From the BBC. Doing the right thing at last
0618: LibyaAlHurra tweets: “Medeor first aid ship arrived yesterday in Misrata under military protection. Hospitals had been short of basics including anaesthetics… Malta&US provided security support… ‘The joy over the relief supplies so far only in the hospital was huge,’ said Dr Nagi Idris founder of ‘Global Relief for Libya’… Medeor.org is responding to urgent requests for additional relief consignments, which are packed and should arrive by the end of the week.”
Why should a referendum question be so complicated?
The question should ask whether we agree or not with divorce legislation, without including any other issues.
As there is no divorce, what does a wife do if her husband commits adultery? What law is involved?
[Daphne – Adultery is not against the law. It was decriminalised a long time ago. It is, however, considered a breach of the contract of marriage and is grounds for separation – not that you need grounds, really. As a side note, women are as likely as men to commit adultery and have far more opportunities to do so.]
What does the church say about adultery?
Don’t you know your Bible? Moses comes down from the mountain and addresses the multitude. “I’ve got good news and bad news” quoth he.
“First the good news – I’ve managed to get the list cut down to ten”.
“Now the bad news – number seven is still on the list”.
I have never been brainwashed er… sorry I meant religiously indoctrinated. They won’t give an annulment for adultery will they?
[Daphne – No. There is no such thing as an annulment, but only a declaration of null. An annulment annuls. A declaration of nullity means there was no marriage to start with. Hence, adultery has nothing to do with it, because it takes place AFTER marriage, by definition. Factors on which a marriage is declared null must obviously have been present before the marriage and not afterwards.]
So from the church point of view the ‘punishment’ for adultery comes on judgment day i.e. the life after this one.
[Daphne – Please. Surely you must know that in any system other than a theocracy, you don’t get punished on earth for religious transgressions. Adultery wasn’t a crime because it was a religious transgression. It was a crime because it broke a contract. In the same way, people could be held to their promise to marry and forced to marry even against their will once they had given their word (hence ‘engagement’). That was done away with in the 19th century, in Malta.]
Finally, do you have any idea why Mintoff brought in civil marriages, legal separations and civil annulments but not divorce (even though divorce from abroad was allowed)?
What about non-consummation? That happens (or doesn’t as it happens) afterwards.
So if she is financially dependent on him then she might as well lump it. No wonder a mainly all-male parliament doesn’ t want divorce.