Don’t get me started on abortion. Killing an unborn baby may not be pleasant, but it is a necessary evil.

@Baxxter: Dr Gonzi might not have struck you as especially bright, but I don’t consider him undemocratic in his handling of the divorce referendum, basically for the same reasons mentioned by James Galea.

I suppose he knew that, with his single-seat majority, allowing a free vote on the issue in parliament would have ensured the passing of the private Bill – something he did not like or agree with.

With hindsight it seems Gonzi calculated that the majority of Maltese would vote against the issue. That he made a wrong calculation is/was a sign that he was out of touch with the mood and reality of the electorate.

Right and wrong may not be decided by majority vote but governments (who draw up policies and enact laws) are. Moral issues impinging on sexual and emotional behaviour are often relative. They change with time, place and awareness.

As an extreme example, I believe abortion will eventually be on the political agenda, despite the current (political) agreement to the contrary. Most of the arguments discussed during the divorce debate will be applied again to the new issue:

x % of the world practises it, a civil right, permissible under certain conditions, a woman’s right over her own body, etc.

Hear hear

Now you’re being naive – certain parts of the Constitution require a referendum (and an abrogative one, at that, not a consultative one, although the practical difference is moot) + a parliamentary vote (which may also require a 2/3 majority, not merely a simple one) in order for change to be enacted.

Your second point is more interesting – is a democratically elected representative supposed to do what he sincerely believes is best or is he obliged to follow the dictates of the people who chose him to represent them in the first place?

This has exercised quite a few worthy minds in its time. Think about it a bit, then think a little more and you might conclude that Gonzi wasn’t such a bad democrat after all.

That is a terrible democrat. If he meant to allow a free vote in parliament, then why did he agree to hold a referendum at all?

And if he thought divorce was inherently wrong, then why put the question to a referendum? Wrong and right are not decided by a majority vote. If he thought divorce was a right then, again, why put it to a vote?

Rights are not decided by a majority vote. His reasoning was incredibly muddled. He looked painfully like a village politician from Europe’s Deep South caught up in 21st century European politics, and refusing to rise to the occasion.

Lawrence Gonzi never struck me as an especially bright man, and the divorce debacle just proved it.

Baxxie – you’re getting your boxers into a twist over this, unnecessarily. Dr Gonzi made his private feelings, regarding divorce, clear to all but then, as a genuine democrat, bowed to the electoral will and introduced the laws that most people, rightly or wrongly, wanted. He didn’t want to do it but accepted that he was under a democratic constraint to do do it nonetheless. That is a true democrat.

Id-Demokrazija ta’ Xarabank. Min jghajjat l-iktar jirbah. U min jahseb ma jinstemax.

That’ll get their attention.

No. You should describe it as “Blind Democracy”

The joke’s on us.