Refutable logic
When Lawrence Gonzi spoke at the Nationalist Party’s general conference last Sunday, he said:
As long as there is a majority in Parliament to approve divorce, I will fully defend the free choice of MPs on how to vote or abstain.
I was very disappointed to hear the prime minister use such shabby reasoning. The logic is 100% refutable. Eddie Fenech Adami’s statements about overturning the referendum decision or substituting it with a general election are essentially undemocratic, but his logic is irrefutable.
If you start off from the point that MPs have a right to vote as they please on the divorce bill or not vote at all, then it follows that they are fully within their rights in overturning the referendum decision.
You cannot argue, as the prime minister does, that MPs have the right to vote as they please or not vote at all, but then qualify this with “as long as there is a majority for the bill”. Once you have qualified their right to vote as they please or not vote at all, then that right immediately ceases to exist.
The trouble with both of them is that they start from a false premise: that MPs have the right to vote as they please after a referendum in which they have asked people to take a decision so that they don’t have to take it themselves. Eddie Fenech Adami then reaches the conclusion that if MPs have the right to vote as they please, they have the right to overturn the result.
Lawrence Gonzi knows that MPs don’t have the right to overturn the result, but instead of concluding – correctly – that this means his premise (“MPs have the right to vote as they please”) is false, he tries to square the impossible circle and ends up making nonsensical statements like this one.
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….. so will the PM wait to vote until everyone has voted and then be the last one to cast his vote? I presume that there is some sort of order and sequence.
He cannot. They vote in strict alphabetical order.
There will be dimming of the lights and the sound of a drum roll …
Just get the goddamn thing done with and move on.
As far as I am aware, if a division is not called, the Bill can be passed without the MPs needing to vote.
This was mentioned by ex-MP Dr. Joe Psaila Savona in a letter to the papers a couple of weeks ago. http://bit.ly/mrMetQ
Is there a flaw in this logic?
[Daphne – There is no flaw in the LOGIC, but there is a glaring flaw in the public affairs strategy: on their way out of parliament, all MPs and most particularly the prime minister will be quizzed by reporters and will have to reply. Why will they have to reply? Because MPs are answerable and accountable to their constituents and have to tell their constituents how they voted.]
But there IS a flaw in the logic. What usually happens is that when the Speaker puts the question, there is just an almost inaudible mumble from the members present (if they bother to make any sound at all) and the Speaker says “carried” or “not carried” according to the position of the “normal” majority (i.e. the gov side). If it is something controversial, where the opposition wants to make a point, someone shouts “division” and the votes are individually counted.
In this case, since it is neither a Gov nor an opposition bill, how will the Speaker call it after the first question put?
The PN seems to have put its finger on the self-destruct button with the divorce issue. It was bad enough during the debate, but now that it is a fact that we will have divorce legislation, the less they talk about it the better for themselves and the party. Please simply talk about something else.
Soon after the referendum results were known, Lawrence Gonzi chose the perfect comment at the perfect moment to let us know that the will of the people will be respected.
However, we all get caught up in the words and ignore the value of his actions.
He should lead by example, leading Parliament to respect the people’s will. Actions speak louder than words.
Lino Spiteri says it all
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110620/opinion/Beyond-the-long-hot-summer.371478
Especially this part:
The saga will not end once the vote is taken. One way or another it will remain a dark cloud on Dr Gonzi. If he votes in favour of the Bill on the second reading – should a vote be called – he will have to live with the disdain of the conservative group in his party, symbolised in the person of Dr Fenech Adami. If he abstains, he’ll be classified as a political chicken, given that he is the leader. If he votes no, he will lose his moral right to remain Prime Minister.
MPs do have the right to overturn the result! They certainly do have a legal right. In this case they do also have a moral right because it is a conscience vote on a moral issue.
MPs are not gods. They are our representatives. After shirking their responsibilities by dumping a multi-million referendum (paid through our taxes) to take the decision for them, they should do our bidding or resign.
Having a legal right is not equal to having a moral or democratic right. Slavery was once legal. Was it morally OK then for men to own slaves?
Is it only the law that prevents you from doing what’s wrong? If it were legal to steal or kill, would you?
The way I see it, Lawrence Gonzi gambled that the people would say No. He lost; they said Yes. Now even if the majority of MPs vote with the people, he cannot vote No or abstain. He has to either vote Yes or resign. There really isn’t much more to it than that, is there?
Dr. Gonzi being a staunch Catholic refused to see the trend where the people stand on divorce. He never expected the Yes vote to win.
Dr. Eddie Fenech Adami was quoted as saying that he was shocked at the result. They both find it very difficult to accept.
The reality is that the majority of the people want divorce legislation. There is no way back and the debate should stop as a lingering debate on divorce will hurt the Nationalist Party.
We are either democratic or undemocratic. There is no such thing as semi-democratic, as there is no such a thing as semi-pregnant.
Please, gentlemen, let’s move on. If the majority do not want divorce legislation in time the people will let the politicians know.
This shouldn’t even have been an issue in the first place. The way I see it: MPs want people to decide, so they hold referendum. The MPs participated in the referendum as everyone else did, so they were allowed to have their say.
So now the MPs’ role is to approve that the grand majority have said Yes to divorce legislation. They had their chance like everyone else to vote in the way they believed. Now we are past that.
Time to grow up and focus on more important things, always assuming that we are in a democratic country.
It’s so that they can field a Yes and No voter in the same district and get votes from electors who chose either yes or no in the referendum.
A vote for a Yes candidate is still a vote for a No party. Beware Fenech Adami et fil et al.
I entertained the thought in a previous comment that, if the PN is re-elected still with its official anti-divorce clause in place, then some dumbass MP from Mosta could claim that the party had a mandate to not implement (or to remove any existing) divorce legislation. Lo and behold – none other than Eddie Fenech Adami is now seriously inciting the party to undertake this course of action. I would never have believed this of him.
The current prime minister is also being inconvenienced by the divorce issue, to the extent of making nonsensical statements.
What is it that makes otherwise reasonable men act in this way? No prizes for the answer. The legal profession, the PN and the church have long been a menage a trois. The times they are a changin’, it’s true, but these two individuals are remnants of this unholy alliance – membership of which, it seems, appears to cloud the mind on occasions such as this.
As long as the PN is an official anti-divorce party (utter madness) I can’t see my conscience allowing me to vote for it.
I suggest that all PN MPs who vote No should resign immedietely and/or dissolve parliament. We already have one Labour Party and we DO NOT need another one.
A No vote is a vote against democracy and our civil rights.
Are we sure that Malta is a democratic country?
The only aspect that is progressively getting clearer in all this is that the process was a gigantic cock-up from the word go.
Had parliament adopted the referendum question as put forward by Gonzi, namely, a plain and simple Yes or No to introduction of divorce legislation, the pre-referendum public debate would have been more focused, the voters less confused, and the referendum result would have been clearer.
Parliament would then have been able to debate and to decide on the issue and its implications starting with a clean sheet and, more importantly, basing its deliberations upon factual information on the state of society as it stands today and on the way society is set to develop rather than on appeals to the emotion – which latter, incidentally, played too significant a part at the expense of the former in the lead up to the referendum itself, perhaps even to an extent that puts the result of the referendum into question.,
In regard to voting on the Divorce Bill, MPs are elected to parliament individually. In the exercise of their function they are expected to act within the parameters of their party manifesto, but in all cases are still free to exercise their judgement. In their actions they answer to the constituents that elected them.
The divorce issue was not included in the manifesto of either party represented in parliament. The issue was, as it were, foisted upon parliament. On this matter, individual MPs are thus free to decide and to vote as they consider best according to their own judgement.
There is no justification in expecting the resignation of any MP who may vote down the divorce bill.. The consequences on whether an MP opts to vote in favour or against the bill rest with the constituents voting at the next general election.
It would indeed be a bad day for Malta and for democracy when MPs feel or, worse are, compelled to throw their judgement and convictions to the wind when deciding on an issue that was never there when they put forward their candidature for election to parliament.
[Daphne – 1. Referendum question: agreed.
2. Parliamentary debate: I would have agreed, had this been the 1970s and our divorce trauma shared with other Catholic countries going through the process round about that time. But debating divorce in 2011 is like debating equal pay for women, which also happened in the 1960s and 1970s elsewhere. Divorce is a given, an inevitable fact of life. We came at the tail-end, nothing left to discuss that hasn’t been discussed already. It should have been done and dusted with no referendum had both parties had the good sense to sit down and talk it through together then both put it in their electoral programmes. Instead they played Canute and tried to hold back the tide.
3. The divorce bill was ‘foisted on parliament’ precisely because both parties adopted a policy of bilateral disarmament: I won’t if you won’t/I will if you will/But preferably, neither one of us will press the Red Button. In a situation like that, electors could not vote for divorce and the parties could pretend that electors didn’t want it, which is why there were not giving them the option. This despite the fact that the polls consistently showed increasing support for divorce legislation over the last few years, eventually tipping past the 50% mark. But still, both parties didn’t want to have to deal with it and so refused to give electors the choice. That is what a private member’s bill is for: to challenge the parties when they refuse to act in electors’ interests or according to electors’ wishes. The only unfortunate aspect I can see is that block-headed refusal of the parties to grow up and commit to divorce legislation in their manifesto, and the unfortunate identity of the MP who put forward the bill. But it would have had to be somebody like him because nobody in favour with his party would have felt able to step out of line like that and do the necessary.
4. The referendum result is very clear and the outcome is not in question. The people who voted Yes would have voted Yes to divorce with bells on, because they think Malta should have divorce legislation and quite frankly, they don’t care about the details because they assume that we’re not going to reinvent the wheel here but model our legislation on that of other European member states.
5. There was a referendum precisely because the issue was not included in the party manifestos. Both party leaders admitted as much. Had the issue been included in the governing party’s manifesto or the Opposition party’s manifesto, there would have been no need for a referendum because in the first case, the electorate would have voted for it, and in the second case, they wouldn’t have.
6. If MPs vote down the divorce bill, it will be too late for constituents to take action against them in the next general election. MPs are there to behave as their constituents wish them to behave and not as they please while putting out the challenge ‘If you don’t like it, vote me out next time’. They are, simply put, NOT their own person and neither are they autonomous. That is why it is called the House of Representatives. It is the grossest insult to the electors to spend four million euros asking them what they think and putting the country through hell and then saying, “Look, on second thoughts I don’t really care what you think now that I know you don’t think as I do.”
7. Nobody is expecting ordinary MPs who vote No to resign. But the prime minister is in an entirely different position. The prime minister who wilfully ignores what the electorate votes for, just because the electorate does not see it his way, has no leg left to stand on and if he insists on balancing it for as long as possible, is doomed to be slammed by the electorate – including those who might have agreed with him – as Alfred Sant found out. Even if I do not agree with divorce legislation/EU membership, I cannot support a party leader who defies a clear referendum result. Defiance in the face of a clear democratic decision is a separate issue and must be considered separately to our feelings about divorce legislation.
8. MPs would have been able to use the ‘not in the manifesto’ justification if the prime minister had woken up one morning and put the divorce bill before them without a referendum. The referendum makes the manifesto issue redundant. If they don’t like it, they are free to leave. They are even free to change their minds, like Marie Louise Coleiro Preca. ]
Daphne, this sums up my experience of Malta
“Look, on second thoughts I don’t really care what you think now that I know you don’t think as I do.”
“Instead they played Canute and tried to hold back the tide.”
Except that Canute’s point as specifically to demonstrate that despite being king he could NOT turn back the tide.
That is the difference between a humble but astute politician and what we are having to go through here.
Stubborn doesn’t even begin to sum up these people!
This idea that “the people” “don’t care about the details” worries me. It implies that the question as it was, with the parameters it established was nothing more than whitewash. And I dont like it when someone presents me with a whitewash.
If that is the case, one can argue that this has been a case of manipulation for getting a Yes vote. Manipulation by Joseph Muscat, to be very clear.
Last year there was a survey, not sure if it was on Xarabank or on The Times in which people were asked what they would vote if the question was just Yes or No, and what they would vote if the question was about divorce with the conditions as listed.
As regards the Yes or No question, the No was in advantage in the survey, but the Yes had a majority as regards the question with the parameters. Muscat craftily forced on Gonzi the question which included the parameters because there was more of a chance that this question would win. This was strategy,or manipulation of the electorate. Depending on your view of things.
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I think that before making such statements, the PM had done his homework properly.
[Daphne – I don’t think so. I think he’s going on gut feelings and they’re failing him badly. He doesn’t even seem sure who votes him in and why. One of his most triumphant performances in the last general election was at the university. Imagine if he were to face that same audience with talk of religo et patria and no to divorce.]
You may be right, but principles are principles irrespective of what a particular audience thinks. Mintoff and KMB were adored by thousands, and yet………
[Daphne – The important thing is to work out what sort of people admire your stance and what sort of people don’t. Mintoff and KMB were adored by thousands of people who had evolved only minimally over hundreds of years and who would have been able to relate easily to the sort of people who stood round witches burned at the stake or beneath the guillotine. Everybody has a right to an opinion, but it doesn’t follow that all opinions are equal. As for principles, you miss the point that I make repeatedly: principles don’t necessarily come from religion and it is quite possible to be in favour of divorce as a matter of principle.]
I would argue that religions, especially monotheistic ones, bring no “new” principles to the table. It is just a framework built to regulate the evolving socio-cultural behaviours adopted by humans over millennia. The key word is “evolve” (read: change).
I understood perfectly what Prime Minister Gonzi said to his party delegates.
In crude terms “I accept and will see to it that the will of the people is reflected in a parliamentary vote. If it were not so I would not leave our MPs to have a free vote. Why should I dictate to all my MPs to vote Yes when I know for sure that with a few votes in favour from the PN side the divorce law will pass”.
Daphne’s logic reminds me of Jesse Owens who was nearly going to be disqualified in the “Nazi Olympics” when he tried to break a record in the preliminary rounds of the long jump, but failed two times. The advice from his German competitor Lutz Long was “you only need to qualify, this is not the time to break records. You can do that later”.
Owens took his advice, got qualified and even beat him in the competitions.
[Daphne – My logic is sound, John. You are making a false comparison between strategy (how to break records in long jump) and sound reasoning in advocacy. When you argue for something, as the prime minister is doing for the right of MPs to vote as they please, you have to make sure that your reasoning is rock solid so that it cannot be torn down by the prosecution. I use legal terms here because the prime minister is arguing as a lawyer and not as a politician and he is well aware that his logic is unsound because his logic is usually faultless. An MP either has a right to vote as s/he pleases or s/he has a right to vote as s/he pleases ‘as long as the bill is carried’, which effectively means that s/he has no such right. If the prime minister means to say something different, as you suggest, then he should come right out and say it. You might admire his approach in this situation, and think it ‘wajs’, but I happen to believe that it will create and deepen problems. Boils are best lanced and bullets best bitten. The place for mediators and moderators and let’s-see-how-things-pan-out people is in the human resources office and not behind the managing director’s desk.]
This is also like catching a train; if the train leaves at 16.00 all you have to be there at 15.55, when the train arrives. It’s useless to be there at 14 hours!
With 35 in favour the law will pass.
[Daphne – I see that you just don’t get what the issue is here and what is at stake. People are not worried that the bill won’t be carried. They are concerned about the cavalier attitudes towards democracy and the opinion of the electorate that are currently on display in parliament.]
@ Daphne: you for one claim to be liberal but you want the Prime Minister to be a dictator with his MPs and vote a resounding “yes” like the Nabucco Choir, when from the outset he gave his MPs a free vote on this issue, and the MPs NEVER considered this bill in their party’s electoral programme.
[Daphne – It is precisely because my political views are liberal that I object to the current behaviour of many MPs, firstly because they appear to believe that whether somebody divorces or not is somehow their business even if they don’t know the person from Adam, and that they have the right to veto this stranger’s divorce, and secondly because when you ask people to take a decision because – and I quote – “this is not for parliament to decide but for the people to decide in a referendum” then you cannot go back on your word. And here it is not the final decision by parliament that counts, but the individual response of each and every MP. ‘It doesn’t matter if I vote No or absent myself as long as the bill is carried’ is galling sophistry straight from the land of Silvio Berlusconi where the means don’t matter as long as the end is achieved.]
If Herbert Ganado were alive he would tell you that you want to squeeze blood out of a rock.
[Daphne – Stone. And he didn’t invent the expression. If I were alive in Herbert Ganado’s time I wouldn’t have voted for him and would have found his extreme right-wing politics off-putting. But then if I were alive in his time I wouldn’t have had the choice because, as a woman, I wouldn’t have had the vote and the people who shared Herbert Ganado’s politics would have said that I wasn’t ‘ready’ to take serious decisions like that.]
For once be pragmatic and say that as long as the divorce law passes the will of the majority will be respected. Why should any MP be humiliated.
[Daphne – It is PRECISELY BECAUSE I AM PRAGMATIC, John, that I say MPs and the prime minister should shut up about their blinking conscience and vote Yes. If they want to base their decisions on the Bible, I’ll give them one: Jesus didn’t die to stop merchants trading in the temple. He died for a real cause. If they want to commit political suicide then how about they find a real cause? Dying for divorce is ridiculous and irresponsible. And wait for it…..deeply immoral and unprincipled. You don’t saddle the country for five years with that bunch of jacksh*t wallies on the other side just so that you can salve your precious conscience. And what does their conscience tell them about landing the country with Prime Minister Joseph as a direct consequence of their stupid actions?
I fail to see how humiliation comes into it, unless we’re talking here of men whose ego, whose sense of self, is so very fragile that saying ‘I bow my head to the will of the people’ will make them go home and break up the furniture and bounce their wife off the walls so that they can get to feel like Real Men again. Why am I left with the feeling that so many people who are in parliament actually don’t belong there? This debacle has exposed the fact that many MPs look at parliament, and the process of getting in there, like a band club committee.]
“MP’s appear to believe that whether somebody divorces or not is somehow their business even if they don’t know the person from Adam…”
Well it seems it is to be their business, because they are adding more rules: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110621/local/divorce-new-eu-rules-on-maintenance-payments.371752
And they’re trying to patch up things because they have a social conscience. Oh that word again!
[Daphne – Wrong. The state’s business is ensuring that parents maintain their children. It does not get involved in whether those parents marry or divorce each other, but when they decide to do either of those things, the state is there to provide the legal framework BUT NOT TO ALLOW OR DISALLOW DECISIONS. When you got married, it was your decision and your wife’s. Nobody told you ‘No, ta, you’re not allowed to get married.’ It’s the same with divorce. And if we’re talking consequences, then it should be obvious there is more risk of harm and damage in marriage than there is in divorce. Divorce, after all, is the consequence of bad marriage.]
Please tell Richard Cachia Caruana to have a sharp word with the PM and pull the party back from the brink.
It looks like a week of refutable logic to me. How long ago was it that you bollocked a poster to your site with the well worn cliche of peanuts and monkeys for suggesting you do a write-up on the latest ministerial salary increase?
It seems ironic to me that our overpaid government hominids seem to be devolving in to nothing more than glorified seat warmers in expectation of the baboons from across the floor to take their place.
Self righteousness, pomposity and hypocritical piousness seem to increase in direct proportion to their salary.
Of course the prime minister is using shabby reasoning that does not survive scrutiny. He is actually using the same “logic” as Henry Ford when he offered his popular innovative Model T car in any colour as long as it is black!
Daphne, those persons who voted for divorce do not mind how our MPs vote so long as the bill is passed through Parliament. And that’s what counts.
[Daphne – Wrong. I mind very much and so do most of the people I know, who voted Yes, and even several of those who voted No.]
The PM offered a fair compromise to everyone and that’s how things should be done. 52% of the 75% who voted means that a good percentage of the Maltese are against divorce. Why do you pretend that all the Maltese want divorce???????????
[Daphne – What do you mean, ‘want divorce’? The people who voted Yes, with just some exceptions, do not ‘want divorce’. They believe Malta, a civilised and developed country, should have divorce legislation for those who want or need divorce.]
I think you would be asking too much when you demand that our MP’s vote yes on the divorce bill.
Democracy is the reflection of the will of all the people, when it cannot be done (most of the time) the majority is given a ‘right’ to impose its opinion on the minority.
In our case you’re demanding that our “No to divorce” MP’s should eat humble pie and vote “yes”(Carmelo Abela & Beppe Fenech Adami come to mind) , even though there’s a certainty that the bill will pass.
If I were one of these MPs, I would not swallow my pride in front of undue pressure like yours.
[Daphne – John, the pressure isn’t come from me but from the overwhelming majority who voted Yes. If an MP wishes to commit political suicide and probably take his party with him, then he is both stupid and irresponsible. In all situations where we are presented with ‘moral’ choices, we must look always to the greater good. Some of those choices are not obvious, hence people who are not particularly bright, or who are blinded by certain things, sometimes make the wrong one. An obvious moral choice would be between saving either an imperilled human being or his dog in a situation where you can save only one. A less obvious (to some people) moral choice would be: do you act in such a way as to bring your party down and land the country with Joseph Muscat as prime minister, by voting No to divorce because that is what you believe? Every general election we are faced with a similar moral choice and many people make the wrong one, which is why the Nationalist Party will not be elected if it some of its people do the same and make the wrong choice. The moral choice this time will be this: do I vote for the Nationalist Party which so opposed divorce and which has behaved so very badly about it, do I not vote, or do I vote AD or for Joseph Muscat? My moral choice, because I look at the wider picture, will be the first, because I don’t want to be responsible, through direct action or failure to act, for electing Labour. But others will see their moral choice as not voting for the PN which behaved so badly on this one matter which, despite being one matter, is representative of a mindset.]
A little less than half of the population’s vote on divorce should be reflected in parliament which after all should represent the people.
[Daphne – No, John, that would be only in a situation where there was no referendum. A referendum supersedes that. The decision is one – Yes – and cannot be broken down into many parts to represent the electorate or according to the individual, personal feelings of MPs. MPs who do not like the result are free to resign their seat. But clearly, they wish to have their cake and eat it, including, I am sad to say because I like him, the prime minister. This is what is known as a watershed moment and they haven’t recognised it. It marks a point where things have changed irrevocably and behaviour and attitudes, or people, must therefore be altered. ]
When election comes people will vote for the MP’s who voted in parliament according to their wishes in the referendum. If this isn’t democratic representation at its best , than what is? Theoretically/ideally the Gozo Mp’s should reflect the Gozitan vote and the Sliema Mp’s should reflect the Sliema vote.Naturally this is hard to put into practice.
[Daphne – You are wrong again, John. Lots of people will vote according to respect for the referendum result, including people who voted No. I know several people who voted No but who respect the result and are appalled at the thought that some MPs might seek to undo it or to vote against. Respect for a referendum result is a separate issue. One already manifests slight undemocratic tendencies in voting against divorce legislation, but must have outright autocratic tendencies to wish to impose your will against a referendum outcome.]
If for the sake of argument the law was drafted and carried in parliament with a simple majority under the condition of a referendum, would you have called for the resignation of those MPs who voted NO, after the referendum result?
[Daphne – I don’t understand your question, but if you mean to ask whether I shall be expecting MPs who vote No to then resign, the answer is that the honourable thing to do would be to resign first. It is dishonourable to vote No and then resign. And pointless. The whole point to a resignation in this situation would be that you are bowing your head to the will of the people, not defying the will of the people and then buggering off.]
The rules of the game for a consultative referendum: 53% of 74% of the polled votes voted yes and we’re saying that the ‘majority’ won.
[Daphne – Sorry, but you really sound like Alfred Sant and Joseph Muscat in 2003.]
Parliamentarians are also free to vote according to their interpretation of the result of the consultative referendum on very specific provisos.
After all they represent their districts. People who voted for Abela in Zejtun would consider him a traitor of his values now that he will be voting “Yes”.
Same applies to the Gozitan MP’s from both sides of the house.
If the vote in parliament is not representative of the people’s opinion delivered in the referendum, the nation will not be at peace with itself. Think about it.
People will accept a defeat but not a humiliating defeat ,for the latter you will have a suicide attack (metaphorically speaking) after the re-union of the remaining forces.
I think that by his last question, John Schembri means this hypothetical scenario:
1. MPs vote on a divorce bill, on condition that a referendum is held and the referendum result is binding.
2. Some MPs vote “yes”, some “no”.
3. The referendum gets a “yes” majority and divorce legislation made.
4. Considering the above, would we call for the resignation of the MPs who had voted No prior to the referendum?
The answer to the question is a clear and unequivocal NO.
Prior to a referendum, and in the actual referendum, every MP has a democratic right to vote as he/she wants.
BUT
After a referendum result, MPs have a moral duty to vote according to the democratic choice of the people – and the only way to do that is to vote YES.
Boils down to head over heart. Could have odd results otherwise, even in a man vs. dog situation.
“Sorry, but you really sound like Alfred Sant and Joseph Muscat in 2003.”
I wish I had the academic qualities of Dr Alfred Sant. He’s a mathematician par excellence.
I’m stating a fact like he did in 2003. I accept the referendum result, but he did not because he wanted to change the (mathematical) rules for his political ends.
I wish I was as academically ‘bravo’ as him but not a “brikkun”.
Kenneth Cassar:”After a referendum result, MPs have a moral duty to vote according to the democratic choice of the people – and the only way to do that is to vote YES.”
I say”After a referendum result, MPs have a moral duty to vote according to the democratic choice of the people – and the only way to do that in our circumstances is to see that the divorce law is enacted and approved in parliament.” The parliamentary majority by which a law is enacted does not make it stronger or weaker!
In two years time you will see to whom the people will vote, they will differentiate between those who stood their ground on the subject Beppe, Karl Gouder, Evarist Bartolo, Adrian Vassallo, Austin Gatt and Mary Louise Coleiro Preca, and those who had a Damascene conversion like Carmelo Abela and Mario Demarco.
People like candidates with a backbone (I don’t mean backstabbers), because you know what to expect of them.
[Daphne – I think you are confusing backbone with blockheadedness and predictability. You know what to expect of people like that, but it has nothing to do with backbone.]
With an overwhelming Yes vote in parliament, half of the country would feel betrayed. The law will pass, and the vote in parliament would not be a walkover but a narrow defeat.
If the law passes with a 49 /16 vote, people in the next election will find solace in the candidate who voted in favour of their opinion in the referendum.
No amount of high brow talk and hypothetical scenarios will change this ‘Maltese’ mindset.
Daphne, call it what you like, but the perception of the people with a ‘Maltese’ mindset (or call it pigheadedness if you like) will remain the same.
Only yesterday an agitated gardener told me that he is illiterate, he is against divorce, he expected Gonzi not to have his wage rise of 500 euros because he got 1.32 euros, and that he was a Nationalist supporter and now he will vote for Joseph.
He doesn’t give a hoot what is happening beyond our shores. “All excuses they are”.
Eddie remains the KING for him!
He has a valid vote like yours and mine.
Hawwadni ha nifhemek!
@ John Schembri:
I would hope that the majority of Maltese voters are not illiterate. I wouldn’t make any assumptions on the opinions of the illiterate.
@ Kenneth: There are illiterate people with whom one can build an argument and with whom one can reason with logic.
The problem lies when many of us want things which we can never have. Then we become envious of people (politicians in our case) who are perceived to have it all. We want them to ‘suffer’ like we’re doing.
That’s why this chap was angry and agitated against Gonzi. The green-eyed monster was stronger than logic and reason, irrespective whether the guy was literate.
I have just read the comments on timesofmalta.com about Air Malta. Most of them refer to how much the new chairman is getting. See how many commentators wrote that the removal of freebie travel to politicians and ex-chairmen was a good move in the right direction ( for the green eyed monster).
@ John Schembri:
I’m not even mildly iterested in the envy of illiterate gardeners.
Like I said, I would only hope that the majority of Maltese voters are not illiterate. Allow me to add envious to illiterate.
@ Carlos:
The people who do not “want” divorce, are free to not get one. As for anyone who needs divorce, no, the state won’t give them 52% of a divorce out of respect for the 48% who voted no. It will give them a 100% of a divorce.
I voted ‘yes’ and I don’t need or want divorce for myself.