Heroes who sit on the fence
This is my column in yesterday’s The Malta Independent on Sunday.
Going by what they have told reporters, it looks like a good third of MPs, almost all of them on the Nationalist Party’s side, will be sitting it out in the parliament bar or watching television at home when the divorce bill comes up for the vote.
I hadn’t wanted to write about this again, because it’s become so very tedious, but it looks like there’s going to be no avoiding it as they continue to flog their dead horse.
Suddenly, sitting on the fence has become an act of great heroism. I’m sorry, but I actually prefer the choice of those who have said they will vote No.
I’ve never had time for people who run with the hare and hunt with the hounds and then tell you they’re being ‘wajs’ or even, amazingly, courageous.
As one MP after the other pops up to tell us that he will be ‘abstaining’ – which means that he will be absent when the vote is taken, as there is no such thing as an abstention – they seem all to have felt the need to explain why they’re doing this. They hate the idea of divorce, it’s bad for society etc, but they will not obstruct the passage of the bill.
They will be heroic and stay out of the chamber. Exactly what is the point now of warning about the evils of divorce when the whole thing is pretty much done and dusted? They’re beginning to sound like Alfred Sant, harping on against EU membership even as Eddie Fenech Adami flew to Athens to sign us in.
I get the feeling that in a perverse way some of them hope that the wholesale erosion of society’s church-going fabric will occur rapidly after the divorce courts are set up, so that they can get a frisson of pleasure from saying ‘I told you so’ and from knowing that they played no part in it.
From there on in, they are going to be all eyes and ears, noticing changes in people’s behaviour – or rather, interpreting them as changes just because they have never noticed them thus far.
They worry (or hope) that things will go to the dogs because they haven’t woken up yet to the fact that this has happened already over the last 15 years, even without divorce, that the situation is all the more appalling without proper legislation because it allows grown-ups to behave like selfish and irresponsible teenagers, which they are currently doing.
The MP who spoke most sensibly about it all was former cabinet minister Censu Galea, who told parliament that because society has changed drastically – it appears he has noticed what his colleagues have not – divorce legislation cannot be put off any longer. He said that the campaign fought by the movement against divorce legislation actually made people go out and vote in favour of that legislation.
He said that he had always fought for democracy and the issue now is whether people are ready to be tolerant of the opinions held by others, that MPs have a duty to express their ideas but also to represent their constituents. He said – I paraphrase here – that divorce does not solve any collective problem, and that he is personally against it, but the common good is built on respecting differences and not on suppressing them, that life in Malta has changed because Maltese people have changed, and that MPs should face reality.
And that’s what it’s all about, really: facing reality instead of clinging to the past and refusing to see what is happening. Some of our MPs, and certainly many of those who think as they do, are like those tourists who visit a third-world country and return to tell everyone who will listen about how happy and smiling all the natives were even though they were poor.
It’s the kind of rose-tinted-spectacle statement that never fails to irritate the hell out of me, and generally provokes me into saying why. But let’s not go into that.
The long and short of it is that this thing is over, and the sooner MPs of both colours come to terms with that, the better. Some of them might wish to go down fighting, but the point of such an act in any situation which calls for it is that one’s behaviour obstructs, in however small a way, the evil against which one fights.
It is self-contradictory to go down fighting while saying that you do not wish to obstruct the passage of the bill. Any act which does not help the passage of the bill is an act to obstruct it, however much Jesuitical reasoning is pulled out of hats to argue otherwise.
Meanwhile, certain newspaper reports do little to help the situation. Here is The Times, yesterday, making Labour MP Owen Bonnici sound as though he is speaking about a machine which has stopped working: “Dr Bonnici said it was absolutely untrue that the faulty part in a marital breakdown would only have to wait four years rather than separate.”
The faulty part? I suppose whoever wrote that meant ‘the party at fault’, and I’m quite sure that’s what Bonnici said too, in Maltese.
The same writer then went on to make Charles Mangion sound like an idiot (or perhaps he did it to himself, in which case it was the reporter’s duty to tell us), by quoting him as saying in parliament that “Maltese society was also composed of 24,700 European citizens who had a Maltese ID card…”.
The last time I looked, there were 400,000+.
If Charles Mangion and the person who reported his words were speaking only of non-Maltese Europeans with a Maltese identity card, then they should have said so. But that was probably a major Freudian slip by one ‘faulty part’ or the other: they are Europeans, but we are Maltese.
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It’s as if these people want the ginger magician in power.
Why are they being so obtuse?
They are just blinded by their religious beliefs.
I don’t think it has anything to do with their religious beliefs.
It all boils down to that they don’t want to offend their voters (Gozo, a case in point) because they might lose votes, and this has nothing to do with religio. What they are looking at is just their personal interest, and that always comes first, second and third.
Does anyone think that if 100% of the voters (very unlikely) voted Yes, they would have voted NO because of their religious beliefs?
They would have all come out with:
“The voters have voted Yes, and as we are here to represent the people, we will all vote yes because the interest of the people comes first.”
It’s a pathetic selfish outdated attitude and from the people who took us into the EU.
What a sad country this truly is.
They’re still losing votes as it is Silvio. For example, I feel extremely uncomfortable voting for an MP who abstains from a divorce vote.
They’re either bad at maths, or maybe it might be religion after all.
“What a sad country this truly is.” That’s what the Australians are saying right now about their politicians, and the Greeks , the Spaniards , Italians the British ….
Daphne, what’s this, you’re being kind with that picture. This one should do the trick.
http://9gag.com/gag/19010
Related: Guess who was awarded a seven-figure commission by Arriva? (No, he’s not mentioned in this article.)
It’s Sybil.
I managed to find a set of episodes of Fawlty Towers. Do you know if there was ever more than one season?
I have the deluxe BBC Edition of all 12 episodes, you can get it from any HMV shop in London. Answer to your Q is no. Despite many offers, Cleese refused to dilute the quality of the writing by working “to order”.
If you want to get to the ‘bottom’ of things, sitting on fences gives you piles. These fence-sitting MP’s will soon disappear up their own excruciating a**holes, if they haven’t already.
While not strictly related to this post, I think you should see the following comment posted on the ToM website at http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110711/local/birth-rate-falls-but-immigration-fuels-population-rise.374993
Its unbelievable that in the 21st century such mentalities still exist…
“Mr Carmel Pule’
Today, 15:05
These are the consequences of the MISINTERPRETATION of equal rights for women. Please think very deeply before you fire at me to shoot me down!
Here is something to think about. The most efficient contraception is EDUCATION, Two salaries in one home encourage higher cost of living, which ties couples to work harder, to copulate and conjugate without fertilisation, passing the reproductive age without replacing themselves, so society ages with not enough children to pay for their pensions. The salvation would be in the hands of illegal immigrants.
Not only Education is the best contraceptive, but education is the most stupid thing ever invented by humans to repress natural instincts that go against nature with the consequences of the eradication of the specis concerned in this case the European white specis. It is interesting to note that the most educated people where religious people who never married and Never had children and segregated man and woman in groups who lived under one roof in a community. ( even a man and a woman under one roof are living like brothers and sisters considering their reproductive rate!) It is clear to me that this formula is now being used by ” Modern civil philosophy with the result that the church and society is aging fast without vocations and as the modern society, due to many reasons, is following the same footsteps, not having children, and man and woman with equal rights are being segragated with society allowing men to live together and women to marry each other. It may sound ridiculous but modern society is following the examples of many religious communities who segregated man and women, have no children and so inevitable destruction and a complete wipe out will follow.
Finally , the greatest asset the world have is not EDUCATION but CHILDREN who are the result of not curtailing the natural reproductive instinct through EDUCATION!!”
Based on his education, or lack of it, he should have a truckload of children.
He’s a doctor and professor at our university.
That is amazing.
Well why not. Let’s just stop educating ourselves, fornicate like rabbits and see how long we will survive as a species. It is about time a more reasonable animal becomes the master race.
Not entirely illogical. Watch the movie ‘Idiocracy’, so that maybe you’ll be better able to follow professor Pule’s thoughts.
You did not think deeply
Sometimes “sitting on the fence” requires more courage than leaping down on the side of the herd – especially when that “herd” pretends to be the absolute majority of the Maltese electorate when they are roughly only thirty percent of the 400,000+ population.
On second thoughts, it may also be a more circumspect decision with a general election looming on the distant horizon. There is no accounting for the shift of opinion of those who abstained during the referendum.
By what stroke of imagination can you call courageous those who ‘SIT ON THE FENCE’?
Elections are lost or won by the majority of the people who take the trouble of going out to vote. All those who choose to stay at home have opted not to have a say in deciding their future.
So no, you are wrong, the referendum was not won by 30% but by a healthy majority.
The ones who stayed at home have (as they say) to LUMP it.
If the referendum was lost, I still believe that divorce law should be legislated.
What about the minority rights. The democratic principle should be expressed only when legislating something that did not existed before, and therefore could not be known. I don’t think the majority should participate in such proposal, considering that Malta is one of the last country introducing such law.
Equality and freedom have both been identified as important characteristics of democracy, but this does not mean that the majority have rights over implementing ANY legislation. I don’t think democracy have anything to do with it. In such case the majority should not rule and the minority should not be oppressed by the tyranny of the majority.
Two wolves and a sheep, voting for what they are having for dinner is not democracy.
You might be a good medical doctor but if I were you I’d not put my foot in my mouth by saying things like sitting on the fence is ‘courageous’. So stick to your medical practice and leave democracy to philosophers.
“…especially when that “herd” pretends to be the absolute majority of the Maltese electorate when they are roughly only thirty percent of the 400,000+ population”.
U l-Partnership rebah.
hallina Dr.Saliba, nahseb andek id dottorat tad demokrazijja int….
Guffaws at “the faulty part” … Lord, help us.
Am I right to say that, once the law is enacted, and once a divorce court or something like that is established – but let us say in about 6 months’ time – there will be something like five to ten thousand applications for divorce to cover all those who will qualify with the 4 year separation clause?
Yes.
This is what it means to have the best of both worlds.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110711/local/coleiro-preca-to-vote-ag.375075
Better still: vote No in the first reading, vote Yes in the second reading, and abstain in the third reading, or a combination like that. Reminds me of “how would you like your ice-cream – we’ve got chocolate, strawberry and vanilla.”
Obviously she is giving in to internal pressure, like Carmelo Abela.
Is it pressure, or threats? Had she not mentioned threats?
He was probably referring to aliens ( people of non Maltese nationality ) .
The closing down of ‘News of the World’ has shown/exposed how dangerous a free and easy relationship between politicians and journalists can be for a democracy’s grasp of the truth.
Taking a look at our situation is scary to say the least especially when approximately 80% of us are brainwashed by their respective party newsroom .
@Silvio & Eric (courageous fellows who do not dare to divulge heir identity) .
Blindly following the herd just because it is a herd does not need any courage at all – it only needs a timid quality usually associated with sheep.
My doctorate is not in democracy – I do not even know if such a doctorate exists. Where did you get yours? Was it the same place where you learned to spell “andek”?
@Silvio & Eric (courageous fellows who do not dare to divulge their identity) .
Blindly following the herd just because it is a herd does not need any courage at all – it only needs a timid quality usually associated with sheep.
My doctorate is not in democracy – I do not even know if such a doctorate exists. Where did you get yours? Was it the same place where you learned to spell “andek”?
“Blindly following the herd just because it is a herd does not need any courage at all”.
Neither does sitting on the fence.
I did not say anywhere that sitting on a fence is the advisable courageous thing to do. I said that jumping off the fence so as to follow the herd requires still less courage, in fact it needs no courage at all.
Dr Saliba I know a lot of people who did not vote and are in favour of divorce .Some of them were frightened by the church and also some did not want to bother doing something our MPs should have done
I know just as many eligible voters who abstained because they were confused and misled by the propaganda lie that prominent Catholic priests were in favour of the proposed divorce law or that faithful Catholics were at liberty to reject Christ’s teaching about the indissilobulity of marriage if their “conscience” said so.
All those MPs who will either vote ‘NO’ or abstain are not following the people’s clear instructions to them.
These MPs are going against their job description therefore they are not fit for their job. We should do what needs to be done come next election time and not vote for any of these MPs, whoever they happen to be.
I will do it and urge everyone else to do the same. Enough with MPs who think they know better than those who vote for them. Let’s start electing new MPs who do their job properly and are truly there to serve the people and not anything or anyone else.
It is not possible for a man to sit on a fence. His testicles get in the way.
That’s only true if he has any.
You are the only male I know who sits on his testicles. My anatomy lessons say that human beings, male and female actually sit on their ischial tuberosities with their genitals way out of the way.
You are assuming these men have testicles, though.
Did you set that as a trap?
Francis: your anatomy lessons did not tell you that the best way to sit on a fence is with one leg on each side and I know without onve having attended an anatomy lesson that testicles do get in the way when you do that.They even do so when you ride a bike so much so that modern bicycle seats have a sort of comfort hollow for male riders.
ciccio: you must have sensed my toungue stuck firmly in my cheek while writing that these ‘men’ have balls. :-)
That was quite gross coming from an ‘educated’ university lecturer. Does he believe that all his students should be male?
Now we have Austin Gatt implying that divorce legislation will lead to (shock, horror) gay marriage.
I’ve just seen this really candid video of a 5 year old who meets his first male gay couple. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504784_162-20078458-10391705.html
Very often what we imagine will shock or harm children is just a function of our prejudices. Children, with their uncomplicated perspectives, have a great ability to adapt… unlike some politicians.
With all due respect in your last sentence lies the root of many social problems (that is, what I see as problems)
We elect MPs who we think know better, R Busuttil. That’s why we had Eddie and Mintoff , because we thought they were good leaders.
Hi everyone,
Reading the posts on this blog gives new dimensions to the words tolerance, democracy, self-importance and a ton of others. Can’t we have an intelligent discussion like civilised human beings and leave self glorification and self awareness out of the equation. Honestly, some posts are an insult to Ms.DCG who continuously goes out of her way to write about salient topics in order to trigger intelligent disussion.
We were right half the time.
Where was he when the brains were given out?
Going back for a second helping of mouth.
I wonder what the Jesuits think of “Jesuitistical reasoning”. However the Jesuits need not worry, as a Jesuit has been appointed Archbishop of Luxembourg.
I think it is fact that ethical standards in the family, in politics, in journalism and in many professions are falling. The recent scandal of News of the World should be an eyeopener. The most popular British gutter newspaper had the lowest ethical standards. Is money our new god, replacing other values as basic human dignity and decency? Is this the future of our journalism?
Dostoyevsky’s comment in The Brothers Karamazov on God and morality may be right after all.
The Conscience Fallacy
PM Gonzi just told Parliament that he is going to vote against the divorce bill. He referred to his “conscience” as the reason why. Where has his conscience been hiding all these years divorce has been perfectly legal in Malta, as long as it was obtained outside Malta?
Prime Minister commits political suicide and ensures a Labour government in the next general elections:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110713/local/gonzi.375350