Il-Partnerxipp rega rebah
The way Alfred Sant and Joseph Muscat worked out the EU referendum result (and used to work out local council election results), the Yes vote in the divorce referendum (122,547) is ‘only’ 38% of the total electorate (325,103).
However fundamentalist they are, not even the No to Divorce camp has used Sant/Muscat’s arithmetic. But sadly, over the last few days I have noticed that many of those who voted No are basing their reasoning – and hopes? – on just those sorts of sums.
More frighteningly still, so are some Nationalist members of parliament, and though the prime minister isn’t exactly spelling it out, because he well knows the suicidal consequences of doing so, it is clear that he is drawing reassurance from just this.
“I was not so wrong after all.”
“Only 38% of the electorate disagrees with me.”
“I speak for the other 62% and can draw confidence from that.”
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Something which the moral police, and those who wish to be able to counter their arguments, should read:
http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-107.html
When Jesus told his disciples to come follow him, were they all single?I think not, so following a religious maverick was good for their families?
Whichever way the numbers are cracked the result speaks for itself .
And they should also read this article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1198962/Yes-family-breakdown-IS-broken-Britain-Top-judge-says-national-tragedy-attacks-BBC-suppressing-debate.html
[Daphne – Somebody else with no perspective on the history of marriage and the family in Britain. What do you think the situation was like among the British working class in the 19th century, David? Do you know that just one ‘charitable institution’ in England took in 26,000 foundlings in just 15 years in the late 18th century? And Malta? What do you think it was like in Malta? The real enemy of stable marriages has never been divorce, but poverty.]
Obviously you would know better on the UK than a leading British judge.
[Daphne – Probably, yes. Judges tend to know about the law (and I don’t, really) not social history. Also he is right in saying that marital breakdown – not the breakdown itself, though, because divorced men and women don’t go out at night smashing car windscreens, but the occasional ensuing neglect of children – causes trouble in society. Where he is wrong is in thinking that it wasn’t ever thus. It was. There was only a very limited period when British society seemed ‘golden’, and this was the immediate aftermath of WWI, the infamous Fifties, when women were bossed back from the wartime factories to their kitchens and talked into having as many children as possible to make up for wartime deaths. The frustration and simmering anger that built up led to the explosion we call the Sixties Revolution, which changed society forever and not just in Britain.]
So, why are marriages in our affluent society increasingly instable? As we say in Maltese “we were better when we were worse”. Maybe marriage breakdown in our modern society is caused by the lack of word becoming with v and the lack of another word beginning with r.
[Daphne – They are not increasingly unstable. Women are now able to move on and fend for themselves, that’s all. Up to fairly recently, they could not. Social censure marked the woman who left her husband as a whore, and women didn’t have any money of their own anyway, so were trapped however miserable they were. And women who were left by their husbands were expected to live out the rest of their lives as martyrs dressed and behaving like nuns. Do you really think that marriages did not break up in the past because the people in them were happy? We were not ‘better when we were worse’. Life in the past was worse on all counts – ALL counts.]
Quiz for the democratically challenged:
Question: Which of the following best describes your reaction to the referendum result?
Choose ONE:
A. Nanna Olga is rolling in her grave.
B. The Madonna is crying.
C. “Victory is guaranteed” – Joe Zammit.
D. “Yippee-Ki-yay Moth** F***er” – Bruce Willis/John Mcclane
Oh by the way, my answer to my own pop quiz is “D”.
We are off to Paceville to watch a film. Does that mean I am also going to a pole -dance club (sorry – gentlemen’s club) ? Same reasoning applies to divorce, so get over it and move on.
Eddie Fenech Adami’s piece in The Sunday Times today is even more worrying.
“I have always maintained that moral issues should not be decided on the principle of democratic majorities but, rather, on the principle of what is morally right. As a Christian I believe, on the authority of none other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that divorce is morally wrong and therefore wrong for society. Should one change this view because a democratic majority decides otherwise? Definitely not.”
So Dr Fenech Adami is a champion of democracy only when the result suits his religious beliefs – prosit ghalih, hej.
So what were we fighting for between 1981 and 1987? I always though that democracy was the basic principle in question.
I never thought that we would come to this but someone has to tell Eddie Fenech Adami to keep quiet or else we might think that he was only leading us for his personal grandeur (I never agreed that he should be president).
[Daphne – Personal grandeur? Come on. His fight against the Labour Party was inspired by the same spirit that inspires Catholic conviction in true believers – viz. John Paul II and the fight against communism, and the struggle of Lech Walesa and Solidarnosc – so he is not being inconsistent. Some people just failed to interpret his motivation/inspiration/strength correctly. I was quite aware at the time that the fight against Labour had dovetailed with ‘religious’. It was God’s fight against evil. We didn’t bother because it was what we wanted and, believe it or not, how we thought. When Archbishop Mercieca led vast ‘prayer meetings’ that spilled out of St John’s Cathedral and into Merchants Street, we didn’t accuse him of meddling in state affairs. We went, and were dispersed by rabid policemen. I hasten to add that I disagree completely with Dr Fenech Adami’s piece today.]
I voted No Saturday week, but now the subject is different. Once the electorate has decided, who the hell do Gonzi and Fenech Adami think they are to not respect that decision?
All PN MPs should vote for the bill. I don’t care what the Labour ones do, but if any one of the PN MPs votes against, then all that the PN stood for in the past was a sham.
“Should one change this view because a democratic majority decides otherwise? Definitely not” – Eddie Fenech Adami.
Of course, he is right. Except that when one is representing the people, only two moral options remain:
1. Perform the will of the people.
2. Resign.
MPs are not paid to act on their conscience, but to act on ours. To do ours is an abuse of power.
Correction on last sentence: To do otherwise is an abuse of power.
Give me a list of MPs in other democratic countries who first vote one way in a consultative referendum and then vote differently in Parliament.
Give me a list of democratic countries that don’t have divorce legislation. Then give me a list of democratic countries whose governments abdicated their responsibilities and bound divorce to a referendum.
Christ at some point (will come up with chapter and verse if pushed) also enjoined his followers to abandon their families in order to follow him.
Quoting the scriptures to support a No divorce position is ignorant at best and dishonest at worst.
Why should we take Christ’s supposed injunction against divorce literally and the above one not? I do not see the Curia exhorting its followers to abandon their families in order to be good Catholics.
[Daphne – Er, no, that’s what they use to justify celibacy and cutting yourself off from your family when you join a religious order.]
The one and only reason why some people in Malta are against divorce is due to some sort of misplaced pride at our uniqueness. Incidentally they should remember that pride is one of the deadly sins. How about that for irony, sinning not to sin.
By their response to the matter of divorce, the Nationalists have created a multi-headed monster of a dilemma.
Is Malta a theocracy or some kind of confessional state?
Once the voting public has been consulted (rightly or wrongly) on an issue by Parliament, what role, exactly does that leave for MPs, beyond the duty to implement the will of the majority?
Does the President have any discretion when it comes to granting his assent to a bill that has been properly passed by Parliament?
Contrast Eddie Fenech Adami’s comments today with those he made to The Times in July 2010: “I’m against having a law on divorce, but if I’m in an institutional position, such as that of the President, you naturally have to respect the people’s mandate, except if it’s serious matter of values….” Repeat: You naturally have to respect the people’s mandate!
[Daphne – Ah, “except if it’s a serious matter of values”, and both he and Lawrence Gonzi for some reason believe that divorce is just that.]
See also Ugo Mifsud Bonnici’s text, “il-Manwal tal-President tar-Repubblika” which is eminently clear on the President’s options when faced with a crisis of conscience.
This tempest in a teapot was avoidable right from the outset, but the Nationalist Party and its “emeriti” just keep on digging themselves deeper and deeper into that hole.
One would hope that the types of serious “matters of values” that would keep a President of Malta awake at night prior to signing into law a duly enacted statute might be something like (oh, I don’t know) a proposed crime against humanity, perhaps a minor genocide, or the mass deportation of all the ginger-haired residents of Comino, or who knows, maybe a bill proposing forced labour for all drug abusers and single mothers.
But no…in this case, Eddie Fenech Adami, Austin Gatt and the Very Rev. Mons. Gonzi appear to be losing sleep over the very serious issue of whether their neighbours who have been separated for four years or longer should be entitled to seek a D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
I don’t hear Eddie bellyaching about the questionable morals of enacting a statute to govern cohabitation among unmarried couples (which, when you think about it, could force some Maltese into a form of legalized bigamy, in the absence of divorce legislation).
[Daphne – They have ruled out anyone who is married from entering into a cohabitation agreement, so that’s a relief at least. They actually thought it would be possible to have cohabitation agreement for people married to somebody else, but then were strongly advised by the legal ‘team’ that this would be impossible as it would, as you say (and as I have been banging on too) to legalised bigamy – or rather, a wife and a legal concubine, or the male equivalent.]
Why are they being so very selective with their morals and the tears of the Madonna?
I have always had the utmost respect for all three of these gentlemen. Now all I can say is why don’t they all just get a life?
Issa insiru gejs, u jkollna il housing b’xejn. U nizzewgu wkoll. U imbaghad niddivorzaw, x’gost.
Insejt issemmi l-abort.
Daphne, Joseph is blonde in this photo. You can be cute at times.
But he was balding already. Is that photo from 2003?
[Daphne – Well, before he became an MEP in 2004, certainly.]
“I speak for the other 62% and can draw confidence from that”
I didn’t vote. I was moving house at the time and couldn’t come down to Malta, plus I’m graduating soon and needed to be at school to finish a project etc.
If I had voted I would have voted Yes. So why do people assume that those who didn’t vote wanted to vote along with the minority?
Those who wanted to vote and could vote did vote, simple. What is the point in trying to “interpret” results?
In fact, one could just as easily argue that more than 62% do not agree with Gonzi, in that they did not want to vote no (sorry for the double negative), which by his same logic, is a Yes.
I guess that’s why we’re supposed to keep things simple and only count the valid votes cast.