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.

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.

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?

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.]

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?

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.

Insejt issemmi l-abort.

Correction on last sentence: To do otherwise is an abuse of power.

“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.

But he was balding already. Is that photo from 2003?

[Daphne – Well, before he became an MEP in 2004, certainly.]