Oh go on, Joseph. Put your money where your mouth is.
A private member's bill on divorce: maybe they won't notice that I need not be prime minister to do that
The Leader of the Opposition was interviewed on TVM’s Dissett two days ago.
He was asked about divorce. And it turns out that, just as I predicted, divorce is not going to be in Labour’s electoral programme in 2013.
Let’s face it. It didn’t take a great deal of intelligence or political analysis to work that one out.
When a political party puts something in an electoral programme, it becomes a commitment which should translate into action. Joseph Muscat has never said, at any point, that his party will legislate for divorce.
What he said is something quite different: that he is in favour of divorce and that he, personally, will bring before parliament a private member’s bill on divorce.
A private member’s bill is exactly what it says: a bill brought by a single MP in his personal capacity, not acting on behalf of the government or the opposition.
In other words, this is Joseph Muscat the MP speaking, and not Joseph Muscat the leader of the Labour Party. Because his promise is for a private member’s bill – in other words, nothing to do with the Labour Party – it cannot be in the Labour Party’s manifesto. And it doesn’t have to be discussed by the party, either.
Oh, another thing: if he brings that bill forward in his capacity as an ordinary MP, he cannot then assume the role of party leader and ‘give’ his MPs a free vote. It would be completely risible. He has to decide: he is either party leader throughout the matter or he is an ordinary MP throughout. But he cannot be an ordinary MP with a private member’s bill who at the same time uses his authority as party leader to withdraw the whip.
All of this begs the question as to why he can’t just bring his private member’s bill before parliament now and have done with it. Why wait until he is prime minister, given that he will be putting it forward as a lone MP rather than as the prime minister with his party behind him? Reno Bugeja asked him this question.
I was all agog for the answer. How was he going to wriggle out of it? The obvious reply, which we know to be the real reason, “I want to hold out until after the election because it’s a carrot that might tempt people to make me prime minister, and if I do it now then they might not bother voting for me” is one he can’t really use in public.
So he deployed his usual tactic of demonstrating just how little he knows and that he is counting on the fact that tens of thousands of electors know even less than he does and won’t spot the holes in his reasoning.
“Divorce hasn’t been discussed in the party yet,” he said, “So that’s why I can’t bring my private member’s bill forward now.” Oh heavens, what a silly, shallow and irritating man.
It’s either a private member’s bill or it’s a bill put forward by the government or, in this case, the opposition. If it’s a private member’s bill – his, in other words, and not the party’s – then by definition it doesn’t have to be discussed in the party because the party doesn’t come into it.
It would have to be discussed in the party if it’s not a private member’s bill. As Reno Bugeja pointed out (and I did, too, elsewhere), he doesn’t have to wait until 2013 because he can do it now.
There is no change in the status of a private member’s bill depending on whether the member (of parliament) is the leader of the opposition, the prime minister, or just any old backbencher. Anyone can do it, at any time, and it makes no difference.
Joseph Muscat doesn’t even have to put forward that private member’s bill himself. Any one of the 60-odd (and some are very odd) MPs sitting in parliament right now can turn up next week with a private member’s bill on divorce. It’s up to them. Muscat isn’t promising anything special. He’s just being ridiculous and hoping nobody will notice.
Equally ridiculous was his statement, made in that pompous tone which is beginning to really rub people the wrong way, that he hopes the leader of the opposition, when he is prime minister (natch) will give his MPs a free vote on divorce “just as I will”. What utter tosh. Governments are able to legislate – though this one has some problems – because they have the majority of votes in parliament.
If and when he is prime minister, Muscat will not need the Nationalist Party’s free vote on the opposition benches to get a divorce bill through. If he is prime minister, he can get it through with no votes from the opposition. But that means he has to use the whip on his own party, and forget all this fudging around with a free vote.
And he won’t do that because he just doesn’t have the guts to put his money where his mouth is and make this statement: “Yes, the Labour Party is in favour of divorce and yes, the Labour Party in government will legislate for divorce.”
Joseph Muscat, like his predecessor, has developed a fondness for the cliché that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I’ll use another cliché from the dessert trolley: he wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to be seen as the leader who ‘did something’ – albeit something utterly pointless and doomed to failure – about divorce.
But he doesn’t want to commit his party to it because he knows that Labour electors are even more conservative than those who vote PN, and a significant majority of them won’t like it.
So he chats on about a private member’s bill and when faced with the question of why he doesn’t do that now, he faffs around some more, bringing in the party as back-up and an excuse when he has just said that he doesn’t want to involve the party.
And we haven’t even begun to touch on the fact that, with a free vote even on both sides of the house, a divorce bill can’t go through. This not because there are not enough MPs in parliament who are in favour of such legislation – there probably are enough – but because, when you lift the whip away from them and expose their vote for the personal choice that it is, they come under all sorts of pressures, from the parish priest to their mother to their wife to their sister-in-law to the local youth fellowship.
Suddenly, divorce becomes something they want, and not something they have been instructed to vote in favour of. It doesn’t take a great deal of insight to see that this will translate into rather a lot of votes against, biex jidru helwin mal-knisja u l-kunjata.
But Joseph Muscat knows that. He’s just being disingenuous and employing as leader of the opposition the tactics he used as a Super One reporter.
It’s about time he grew up. After all, he’s been leader of the opposition for long enough now.
This article is published in The Malta Independent today.
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To me you are a genius and the best straight-thinker I have ever known. The most common thing in life is to sit on the fence – to wait for the best moment to decide which side to jump over to.
Some people sit on that fence all their life but like you said, they want their cake and to eat it too. They sometimes go through the whole of their life without being challenged or made to decide.
The next election will be decided by two groups of people – those who will vote Labour because they are not logical thinkers and only take things at face value, and those who are intelligent enough to see this fence-sitting but couldn’t care less because they have grown to believe that sitting on the fence is normal unless something personal comes up.
What these people usually lack then is insight – how the macro actually affects the personal life of all of us.
To quote Roamer in The Sunday Times last Sunday:
“Anybody who makes capital out of 2009 and attempts to point an accusing finger at the government must first concede that the country weathered 2009 better than most EU members; must compare our unemployment figures with Spain’s 20 per cent, to take one example; must hang on a while before he condemns our tourism sector and, bar what is being called a potential “double-dip” recession – in which case God help us all; acknowledge with some satisfaction that our January figures were higher by 10,000 than those for January 2009; and take into account that private-public projects will be coming on stream just when they are most needed to boost employment.
Nor should we ignore the over-subscription for tens of millions of euros worth of bonds. This is, pace the opposition and whiners, a vote of confidence in the country’s economic progress even in times that could have been far more dire but for the direction the government is willing the country to take.
There is something verging on the manic about the mainstream media when, for example, one reads that, “The PN in government increasingly appears to be out of control, shorn of new ideas and spending a lot of time managing an internal crisis that promises to continue growing”; about this latter, later. But to declare that the government is shorn of new ideas when evidence to the contrary is ongoing and abundant is at best an opinion verging on the banal.”
I think we all need to be a bit more logical, use a little insight and stop sitting on the fence. I hope logic wins the next election.
Joseph Muscat is flirting with progressive policies, however, he is unfortunately not taking a strong position in favour of divorce.
If the divorce is introduced in Malta, those who do not want to make use of it will not be forced to do so; that’s what the message be to all those conservative people in our sometimes very backward society.
[Daphne – Yes, there are situations in which a person who doesn’t want divorce can have it forced on him/her. It takes only one spouse to initiative, and get, a divorce.]
And what the hell are those members of Labour doing with a supposedly secular and progressive party when they are all-out conservatives?
That’s quite a facetious Daphne – in that case, a person can have a separation ‘forced’ upon them too. Or would you rather a situation in which a spouse is effectively a slave to their other half’s wishes? Some marriage that would be.
[Daphne – I wasn’t volunteering an opinion there, but just stating the obvious. Not all people who are divorced have chosen to be, so the argument ‘if you don’t want to be divorced you don’t have to be’ is clearly a non-starter. It’s precisely because of this that the ‘demographic’ most opposed to divorce is not religious elderly people, as might at first be thought, but financially dependent middle-aged women who have no skills with which to maintain their way of life through their own efforts. I can’t blame them. Can you? Of course, their husband can still leave them and wrench away their support system, but it seems to them that divorce will make it more likely and even easier.]
Marital vows made between two people should be the concern of those two people alone. It is not up to me, you or the state to hold them to their word and punish them for reneging on the promises by refusing to allow them to untie the knot.
[Daphne – It is more than possible to untie the knot. Many thousands of people have done so. What is not possible is to tie a new knot.]
The PN is vehemently socially conservative (anti-divorce, anti-abortion, not-quite-anti-but-mistrustful of gay and lesbian culture, in awe of the Church and curia etc) while at the same time espousing the benefits of the free market in economic matters. That an ostensibly centre-right party constantly tries to nanny its citizens through a chrisif tian ethical ethos is just one of the delirious schizophrenic qualities of Maltese politics.
[Daphne – That is not the case at all. The Nationalist Party does not assess people according to whether they are gay or straight, but according to whether they are good at what they do or not. That’s why gay people proceed right up the ladder in the PN hierarchy while in the Labour Party they are ghettoised into something called LGBT Labour. I see this as the political equivalent of those terrible blue buses which have ‘TRANSPORT FOR DISABLED PERSONS’ emblazoned across them, so that commuters can look up and say to themselves ‘ Oh, there go the handicapped people in their handicapped people’s bus.’]
That the PL is trying to paint itself as the New Labourabour equivalent of Britain’s Labour party, only 15 years too late, is another.
Both parties, as is the case everywhere, are hypocritical jokes. All we need is a Maltese Malcolm Tucker, and the farce will be complete.
@ Daphne
‘That’s why gay people proceed right up the ladder in the PN’
But they do so as long as they don’t publicly declare themselves as gays or lesbians. Their success in the Nationalist hierarchy comes despite being gays not the other way round.
[Daphne – Not at all. This might sound strange to you, but militant or resentful homosexuals actually have the same attitude that homophobes do: they think homosexuals are different and require special treatment. Why do homosexuals have to declare themselves as homosexual? Because you say so? I don’t go around telling people ‘Hey, by the way, just in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m heterosexual.’ So I don’t expect people to say ‘Look, just to get things sorted here, I’m gay.’ ]
Malta is not Martinique of the 1940s where (Frantz) Fanon grew up. We do not have black skins and wear white masks… Our masks are different. But the point I wish to make is another.
Despite what Daphne says, in Malta it is not possible to untie the knot. You may untie elsewhere, and Malta will recognize it. But once you tie it, Malta will not untie for you.
[Daphne – Of course you can untie that knot here. What else is a separation? From that moment on, husband and wife are separate. They no longer have any rights over each other – no rights of inheritance or ‘usufruct’, for example. If a previously dependent wife accepts a lump sum as a pay-off rather than monthly maintenance, she even loses all rights to her husband’s pension and becomes dependent on the state minimum pension. There are no obligations, either, unless they are mandated by the court or agreed to out of court, by contract, as with maintenance for wives too old to re-enter the job market. So the marriage de facto no longer exists, except on paper.]
Having said that, one might find many grounds on which to disagree with you on this one: “Marital vows made between two people should be the concern of those two people alone. It is not up to me, you or the state to hold them to their word and punish them for reneging on the promises by refusing to allow them to untie the knot.”
Divorce brings in its wake a dependency (as Daphne obliquely points out) on social services.
The economic consequences of divorce are therefore felt by the rest of society.
Therefore, the fate of that knot which you consider private is in reality of concern to all of society, and therefore public.
Your argument would hold water, Fanon, if there were no social services. Then everyone would just have to be responsible for one’s own actions. As things stand today, you decide to divorce from your wife because you fell in love with a younger woman, then your first wife cannot support herself and she becomes an added burden on an already overburdened social security system. Which then translates into a perpetual temptation for government to put its sticky hands deeper into my pockets.
[Daphne – I don’t think you understand that divorce does not absolve men from financial responsibility for their previously dependent wives and children.]
So that capricious man or woman who wants to leave their first spouse to enjoy the tender love of a second one ends up having me subsidizing their decision. Why don’t they just work harder at their first marriage?
[Daphne – It is my view that while many marriages happen because of caprice, very few break up because of it.]
That man/woman might argue they married the wrong person. Fine: let them get annulment. Which, by the way, is already available.
[Daphne – You don’t get an annulment by claiming you married the wrong person.]
Both parties have had gay members in high-ranking positions, but their sexual orientation has always been a well-guarded secret. That has more to do with Maltese culture than the political ethos.
Nevertheless, my point about the schizophrenic nature of Malta’s two main political parties still stands. Both parties have two audiences, both dialectically opposed to one another. The PN has the urbane toffs on the one hand, and the rural die-hards (vide Gozo) on the other. The PL has the inner-city working class, and the progressive socialists.
Watching the two parties try to please both their audiences is quite the sight, and results in the prosaic hypocrisies of our politics. Pointing out the holes in the logic of Joseph Muscat or Lawrence Gonzi’s arguments is like shooting fish in a barrel: when it comes to their politics, logic or ethics are four-letter words.
I beg to differ:
1. Despite separation, the knot remains tied. That is the basic difference between separation and divorce. In divorce you can remarry (i.e. the knot has been untied); in separation you may not.
2. Not all husbands can afford lump sum payments, and therefore your argument is not all-inclusive.
3. Please explain why these two statements which you made are not contradictory:
(a) It’s precisely because of this that the ‘demographic’ most opposed to divorce is […] financially dependent middle-aged women who have no skills with which to maintain their way of life through their own efforts.
(b) divorce does not absolve men from financial responsibility for their previously dependent wives and children.
[Daphne – This is why: women who live on maintenance live on a fixed sum. Women who live with their husbands do not, unless they husbands are unusually stingy and control everything down to the last cent. Divorce does not remove only the purse-strings, but also an entire support structure. Divorced women end up living ‘smaller’ lives than they did before, in every aspect. Of course, this applies also to separation, but women of a certain age perceive divorce as a greater threat than separation. It might be illogical thinking, but it is how they see it and you will discover this for yourself by the simple expedient of conducting a quick poll among women you know who are married, don’t work and too old (or reluctant) to enter the job market or retrain. Women who are financially independent think differently.]
4. With regard to this: It is my view that while many marriages happen because of caprice, very few break up because of it.
Marriages break up because of any of the following: (a) adultery; (b) violence or other ill-treatment; (c) abandonment of the home; (d) incompatibility of character.
(a) is capricious. (c), too, unless the spouse who leaves the home was the victim of (a) or (b).
(b) and (d) in particular point at having married the wrong person; the next logical step is to annul that marriage.
[Daphne – You’re being very simplistic. Adultery is rarely capricious. Having married the ‘wrong’ person is not grounds for having a marriage annulled. Now that would be capricious. I might be in the minority here, but I am very shocked by the number of people who think that having their marriage declared null and void by the Catholic Church is actually the more moral option to divorce. It is not. It is really immoral. What these people wish to do is wipe out the fact that they were married at all, so that they are granted a form of ‘absolution’ and a clean slate -not because they are good Catholics but because they are not adult enough to face the fact that yes, they were married and yes, they did have a spouse, and yes, the marriage failed. Divorce at least does not seek to wipe the marriage off the record books, but merely to end it.]
5. Annulment is a byword for having married the wrong person. Whether it’s a case of mistaken identity (you wanted to marry Y but married X – usually in marriages by proxy), or of not having been aware of certain characteristics (physical, mental, behavioural, etc), annulment can be summed up thus: you gave your consent to marry someone but your consent was “corrupted” by a fact which renders your spouse not the person you would have married had that fact not existed or had you known about it beforehand.
E.g., your spouse has a disease which progressively leads to blindness and they never told you.
[Daphne – Wrong. People marry for better of worse, in sickness and in health. If you seek to have your marriage annulled because your spouse is going blind and never told you that this might be a possibility, then you lacked the love required for marriage in the first place. It is a pitiless, even evil, ‘church’ that permits a person to dump a spouse for this reason – so you exaggerate.]
E.g. your spouse was impotent, frigid, infertile (before the marriage), and they never told you.
[Daphne – Yes, because to the Catholic Church, the whole point of marriage is bringing children into the world. For me, that would be grounds for divorce, not grounds for annulment.]
E.g. your spouse has a psychological problem or their attitude is such that they do not understand what married life is;
E.g. you were forced to marry that person because of some external factor.
So, yes, annulment means the marriage is declared null and void because the person you married is the wrong person, “wrong” in the sense that had you known before something which you got to know after, you would not have married that person.
You are right in the sense that colloquially we mean something different when we say, “I married the wrong person.” But that is not what I had in mind.
@ dudu
What you have stated is one of the problems that some homosexuals bring on themselves. Heterosexual persons who act in outrageous ways are shunned as much as homosexuals are who act in the same way. One does not need to go and put up a placard stating one’s sexual orientation. The sexual orientation of those who have made it to the highest levels within the PN was known to all, including the highest officials of the PN.
As a higly soaring floating voter, I was, till today, setting my sights somewhat towards the Labour Party, come next musical chairs day.
Like others, I have been waiting (not holding my breath) to see if there might be some potential in the leader’s policies.
His outspoken favouritism towards divorce made it seem like he may have been a good choice, as in “f’lahhar, xi had b’mohhu ftit miftuh.”
If he is going to start cowering down as in this case, and not put divorce as a legislative certainty in the party manifesto, lord knows he is showing himself as nothing else than a puppy who allows himself to be put on a leash by those around him, rather than sticking to his own beliefs.
You mean you’re waiting to see whether he has any policies at all.
I was actually. He made a statement about something concrete at last. Pity it was this. At this rate, come crunch time, he’ll have been well and truly bound, gagged, muzzled, blindfolded, and spayed.
Think he’s already been spayed.
Joseph W*nker Muscat would do well to keep his trap shut. Many Maltese citizens were relying on him to get the divorce debate going and instead he came out with a fudge. Quite clearly the man is another Labour loser.
Evarist Bartolo insists that divorce is to be in Labour’s electoral programme in 2013, while his leader says not. Sitting on the fence does not make one a true leader. Just a serpente biforcuto.
The biggest oversight the Labour Party ever made after Alfred Sant finally departed was not making Evarist Bartolo party leader. And I don’t say this because of the divorce matter. He is in my eyes one of the few ragel fuq l-irgiel from both sides of the political divide.
Dear Daphne, you are missing something about the subject of divorce. I think this bill should be put in Parliament by our Prime Minister and give a free vote. Why should we wait another three years to see this bill through?
[Daphne – No, Carm, YOU are missing something. A private member’s bill can be brought forward by ANY MP. It doesn’t have to be the leader of the opposition and it certainly doesn’t have to be the prime minister. And private member’s bills are always, by their very nature, subject to a free vote BECAUSE NOT BEING BROUGHT BY THE ‘PARTY’ THEY ARE NOT SUBJECT TO THE PARTY WHIP. Joseph Muscat is either very ignorant or very manipulative of people’s ignorance when he says that he will give a free vote for his private member’s bill. HE HAS NO OTHER CHOICE WITH A PRIVATE MEMBER’S BILL. YOU CAN’T USE THE PARTY WHIP FOR A PRIVATE MEMBER’S BILL. Maybe if I put it down in upper case it will be clearer.]
Joseph Muscat is both ignorant and manipulative of other people’s ignorance. It’s a deadly combination.
Carm – did you or did you not read this article? Daphne repeated and repeated her point on the mechanics of a private members bill, using various wordings, just to make sure we all ‘get it’, and you say SHE’S missing something?
Mind you it would be a scream if one of the PN MPs was to bring a bill forward right now and pull the rug from under JM’s feet, wouldn’t it?
Gosh… still talking about divorce? Malta is truly light years behind the rest of the world, with the exception of The Philippines. I cringe.
Frans if your family life is disrupted, you can always go someplace else and do what you want. But what you cannot do and are not allowed to do is to impose your wish for divorce on other people. We don’t accept that.
Having divorce in our legislation does not make our country more free, or progressive. Not even the MLP, new progressive movement, will have divorce in their electoral programme.
Joseph Muscat is just trying to steal votes with his wish list. And then, if his party does not allow him to introduce divorce, he’ll say, I gave a free vote, but the party let me down. It’s not my fault! But he would still remain PM.
“But what you cannot do and are not allowed to do is to impose your wish for divorce on other people”
This mentality from supposedly mature people is beyond belief!
James please tell me who will be imposing divorce on you if you don’t wish for it?
On the other hand, why should you impose an unhappy marriage on a couple if they wish to divorce?
After 43 years I am still in my only marriage and expect to remain so BUT, in the unlikely event of my wife or I agreeing that a divorce is what we want because one of us wants to spend their remaining years with someone else what right have you or ANYONE got to impose your will on us?
Why don’t we call a spade a spade and admit that there is one and ONLY one reason for a divorce debate in the country…THE CHURCH and nothing else.
Is there someone, anyone, who has the balls to tell the church in Malta to bud out of people’s lives once and for all PLEASE.
Yep (pat on the back). We are progressive enough not to nail ourselves to crosses at Easter time.
Sssshhh Daphne, don’t wake Joseph up!
He is doing just fine, in fact, he is doing better than his predecessor and his inanities outshine Fredu’s.
How can one expect any better from Joseph who boasted, just before being elected leader, that while he was warming the European Parliament’s benches he had written a 15-year plan for Malta?
I wonder what became of that virtual document – maybe it evaporated in cyber space?
Didn’t Alfred Sant also boast that the Party had written a 600-page master plan? Since the ‘Moviment tal-Progressivi u l-Moderati’ are so green these days, have they started to recycle the reams of paper they used for plans, electoral manifestos (replete with computer errors) for the sake of the environment?
Cute picture, by the way. How soon will we see Christmas lights around it?
Great article. The part about MPs voting against a hypothetical bill for appearance’s sake strikes me as particularly true.
“But he doesn’t want to commit his party to it because he knows that Labour electors are even more conservative than those who vote PN, and a significant majority of them won’t like it.”
I don’t necessarily agree with this statement since voting in Malta is an emotional issue, not an action to contemplate and reason out. They just vote Labour “even if it is lead by a two-headed monster” (old quote). They don’t care what’s in the electoral programme, and most of them do not know what it is anyway. They voted for KMB in 1987 and 2002.
But KMB didn’t try to introduce divorce.
Joseph is a new leader and he cannot rock the boat too much. I hope he realizes that politics is the art of waiting for the right moment to implement a good, well rehearsed plan.
Maybe after Sant they realized this as he didn’t wait and his plans were no good…
There is no good well rehearsed plan. Dark hints are just that, and no more.
Rikeb fuq il-wegghat taz-zwigijiet li qieghedin f’diffikulta jew li tkissru, id-divorzju kien diga xi haga li fegg qabel l-ahhar elezzjoni imma qatt ma’ ddahal f’xi programm elettorali.
Li se jaghmel hu li jdawwar lilu nnifsu b’nies li huma favur id-divorzju ghal elezzjoni li gejja, u min se jiddikjara ruhu kontra jigrilu bhal Mrs Cettina Darmenia Brincat ta’ Hal-Luqa: jombrah il-partit u jiddahhal ‘wicc’ gdid bhal ma’ kien dahlilha Charles Mangion. Ghalhekk nies bhat-tabib Vassallo ta’ l-iMsida u Carmelo Abela taz-Zejtun jistghu iqisu ruhom barra.
Kif ikun zgur li hu imdawwar bin-nies ‘it-tajba’ johrog bl-agenda tad-divorzju f’isem il-Partit Progressiv Liberali u Moderat Malti – li jkaxkar u jtajjar lil-kull min ma’ jaqbilx mieghu BIL-PULIT ghax ta’ qabblu kien bis-salvagg-(dik hi d-differenza).
Iz-zmien se jtina parir, issa ormaj drajna naraw dawn il-buzulotti.
” … biex jidhru helwin mal-knisja … ”
Mill-Knisja tohrog il-verita’. Ghax hija mmexxija mill-Ispirtu s-Santu. Hemm differenza – anzi bahar jaqsam – bejn opinjoni u verita’. Apparti t-taghlim car tal-Iskrittura fuq id-divorzju, in-nisrani f’Malta huwa mheggeg mill-Madonna stess – li bhalissa ghadha tidher, normalment kull nhar ta’ Erbgha fuq Borg in-Nadur – biex jibqa’ jitlob bil-qalb biex ma jidholx id-divorzju f’Malta.
”… U itolbu ħafna għall-familji. Il-familja Maltija qed titkisser biċċa, biċċa, uliedi. M’għadhiex familja bħal qabel. Kellkom teżor. Kellkom ġawhra. Dil-ġawhra m’intomx tapprezzawha bħal qabel. M’intomx. Le. Erġgħu lura għal li kontu, uliedi. Erġgħu għaqqdu l-familja bħal qabel. Ibqgħu iġġieldu kontra d-divorzju u s-separazzjonijiet. Għidu: ‘le!’, ‘le!’, ‘le!’.
… Iva, uliedi, erġgħu duru lejn Ibni Ġesù f’dan ir-randan imqaddes u agħtu eżempju lid-dinja. Mhux tnax-il appostlu kien hemm? U tnax ġennew id-dinja wara Ibni Ġesù. Intom illejla qegħdin aktar minn tnax. Tistgħu tagħmlu ħoss kbir ukoll. Aħdmu, uliedi u ressqu n-nies lejn Ibni Ġesù.”
Jekk id-divorzju ma jidholx f’Malta tirbah il-verita’, tirbah il-familja, nirbhu ahna lkoll. Kull nisrani ghandu hafna x’joffri. Is-sahha fil-kuruna tar-ruzarju qieghda u mhux fl-opinjonijiet tan-nies fuq is-suggett li jistgghu jinbidlu kull hames minuti jew inqas.
Daphne, naf li ma temminx. Imma jekk ma thallix barra dal-messagg tal-Madonna tas-17 ta’ Frar, 2010, naccertak, b’konvinzjoni azzarija, li ha taghmel hafna gid.
Eh? L-ebda Gesù m’hu se jghinek komtra mara li tittradik.
“Jekk id-divorzju ma jidholx f’Malta tirbah il-verita’, tirbah il-familja, nirbhu ahna lkol”
U TIRBAH L’INIORANZA Carm
@ scicluna
You should be locked up – pronto
Good article. An unfortunate case of Labour’s penchant for running with the hare while hunting with the hounds. On the other hand, the PN kowtows to the Catholic Church while keeping the notion of a secular state firmly out of our reach.
Pity – whatever political fence you sit on, divorce is one basic right we need to get through parliament as fast as possible.
“He doesn’t want to commit his party to it because he knows that Labour electors are even more conservative than those who vote PN, and a significant majority of them won’t like it”
That is the best assessment I have read in a while.
Aside from the technical details of putting divorce for a parliamentary vote, I assumed he’s talking about it to raise the profile of the issue and force a public debate. Don’t you think there is more talk about it now, and with Muscat talking about it the issue is being debated even by Cikku, Peppa and their dog.
[Daphne – No. I have been writing a newspaper column for 20 years, and for all this time divorce has invariably been talked about and ‘just over the horizon’. I can’t believe I’m still writing about it two decades on, while people continue to rehash the same arguments. The debate may be fresh and new to Muscat. It certainly is not new to me. Few jobs are more tedious than having to write about, at 45, the exact same things you wrote about at 25.]
So has public opinion changed enough to actually introduce divorce, or does it still need some persuading?
If Muscat had to bring the divorce bill before parliament now the chances of approval would be even slimmer than 3 / 4 years down the road when the discussion would have matured enough and ideas have settled.
I think that your prediction that it will still be rejected is a bit short-sighted and premature. You forget the fact that if a private member brings any bill while he is part of the majority in parliament it is obvious that he is in a better position. Unfortunately you and most of the other smart, logical, real thinkers have a hidden agenda as much as he does!
[Daphne – I don’t think you fully understand what a private member’s bill is: a bill brought forward by a single MP, and that means there is no issue of majority. To have a majority, Muscat would have to put that bill forward as ‘the government’, and then use the party whip.]
At least the fact he managed to start a debate is a good thing irrelevantly from his real motives.
[Daphne – Start a debate? Where have you been these last 20 years? You sound like a teenager, who thinks that sex started when he turned 14.]
If you take it by its definition you are right in that there isn’t a majority issue but that is hardly the way things really work out in practice especially in this case.
My point is that your prediction is flawed because it does not consider that there would be a new parliament with some different members, possibly a different opposition leader and the influential strength Muscat would enjoy if he wins the next general election after 25 years in opposition.
[Daphne – 15 years, not 25.]
I have no hard facts to prove my point but no-one does as it never happened before in Malta! Any prediction at point is just speculation.
“Start a debate? Where have you been these last 20 years? You sound like a teenager, who thinks that sex started when he turned 14.”
Oh I see so the divorce debate actually started when you stated to write about it 20 years ago! Sorry but you have simply shifted the date from my perspective to yours so the teenager stereotype you mentioned applies to you as well.
[Daphne – No, there was no debate before that. I started writing a newspaper column because I was tired of reading sterile newspapers in which there was no debate about issues but only stiff reports about facts and events. It was the first such newspaper column – a proper one, that is. There were no radio or television stations other than PBS at the time, either. Those came in 1992. The debates to which you are accustomed, with everyone and his dog having their say on air and in print, are a development of the last two decades.]
I posted this comment on timesofmalta.com last Tuesday under the report about Muscat’s interview on Dissett.
‘The point in Dr. Muscat’s reference to divorce is not whether we should introduce it or not. It is his way of dishing out something to please a sector which is in favour and at the same time not wanting to upset those against. If he is convinced that it is high time that divorce is introduced in Malta than he should have the courage and make it part of his electoral manifesto for 2013. This pantomime of leaving the decision to a free vote in parliament does not hold as parliament will not have the mandate from the electorate to enact unless it would have been included in the manifesto. Also he need not place himself as a victim of the church from the ouset in this matter because he knows well enough that the church is against divorce and if it sees fit to have a campaign against it , it is only its prerogative to do so. His reasoning is defeating the object and putting such an important decision in the hands of only 65 members of parliament. This proposal should go into the electoral manifestos subject to a referendum. Anything else is empty talk.’
With his approach Joseph Muscat is also ruining the possibility of a serious discussion on the issue of divorce. If he continues to use it as vote catching he is doing a great disservice to the all Maltese.
There should be no referendum on divorce.
It’s a choice and not by any means mandatory. Basic human rights are not subject to majority rule in any civilised country which in this case means everybody except us and the Philippines.
Adrian Vassallo, Marlene Pullicino (Orlando), Joe Debono Grech, Carmelo Abela. Joseph Sammut – bye bye.
[Daphne – This island is thick with newsrooms, and not one of them thinks to run through the list of Labour MPs, asking each one how he or she would vote on Joseph Muscat’s private member’s bill. It’s not only the results that would be interesting, but the political fix it would put them in.]
But they are interested in asking the PN members how they will vote on health reform.
Daphne, kemm hawn ghaks u guh. U sadanittant tisma lil Alfred Zammit ta’ Kalamita jaghmel reklamar ta’ dghajjes li kullhadd jista jixtri b’ 4,400 Euro. U dan minghajr il-magna.
I see a lot of confusion in the Labour Party about it being a progressive and moderate movement, and it seems Reno Bugeja was best able to uncover some of it so far. Progressives are usually liberals, and by definition not moderates. Therefore, a movement of “progressive moderates” is a contradiction in itself. This merits some hammering from those in Pieta.
Toni Abela told Reno Bugeja that in certain circumstances abortion may be allowed, and then he came out with a “statement” saying he is against abortion. Then Joseph Muscat told Reno that he will present a private member’s bill for divorce rather than putting it in the electoral programme. A week or so before, I believe Evarist Bartolo stated on PBS that Labour should have divorce in its electoral programme.
It seems that whereas they are trying to sell a party, or a movement, of “progressive moderates,” they have done no homework at all beforehand of what that means, and as usual, they will now work out some half measures that will fit the slogan. Something similar to what New Labour did in 1996-1998 when it created CET in a desperate attempt to meet the electoral promise of removing VAT.
Meanwhile, I find it strange that the leader has made a commitment on the way forward, possibly three years ahead of an election, while his party still debates the subject.
Daphne: is something the matter? You have told us nothing for the past 20 + hours.
[Daphne – I was otherwise engaged.]
Kelli l-istess hsieb jien Avatar. Nibzghu ghalik ahna, Daph.
Avatar – will reply to you here as my reply to Daphne in the strand above is still awaiting moderation.
Divorce does not absolve the wealthier spouse from any financial responsibility. Just ask Heather Mills or Paul McCartney (or, for what it’s worth, any of the thousands of wealthy divorcees across the world).
Your comment that divorce is a burden on wider society because (and I quote)
“your first wife cannot support herself and she becomes an added burden on an already overburdened social security system”
is not only an extremely simplistic reading of a situation, it is also somewhat sexist. Are you seriously suggesting that most married women lack the necessary skills to support themselves, should their husband elope/pass away/stop working?
“Why don’t they just work harder at their first marriage?” you ask. I agree. They should work harder. But people being people, we just won’t. Look at John Terry, Ashley Cole or Tiger Woods, to mention two recent high-profile cases. Their long-suffering wives could do a Hillary and just grin and bear it. They could try forgive and work through their problems. But, equally, the least society could do is allow them to declare the marriage a failure, put it behind them and let them move on with their lives.
After all, if a failed businessman can file for bankruptcy and start afresh, why not a failed husband/wife?
Joseph Muscat has always defined moderates as those who concur only on certain points of the PL manifesto, who, though uncomfortable with being sheltered under the PL, might settle in its penumbra.
However, when on Dissett, the political and sociological significance of the term “progressive and moderate movement” was put forward to two university professors, Joseph Muscat immediately admitted his familiarity with one of them since the latter had participated in the EP elections on the PN’s list.
This professor of political science is a well known philosopher, author, teacher, poet, and is one of the most recognizable figures at the university. Joseph Muscat might have referred to any one of his plays, or books, or to a personal anecdote. Yet, the first thing that sprung to his mind was this person’s political background, therefore classifying this man as a political adversary. Those few seconds struck me as being rather discordant to the embracing mentality that the PL’s movement is attempting to impart. What do you think?
I noticed that too. The implication was that this person’s opinion does not matter because he is PN.
I am surprised that the Labour Party have ignored the divorce issue.
Joseph Muscat agrees with divorce; he admitted that himself on Xarabank. I can understand that that’s his personal opinion but who is the Labour Party trying to please? The Catholic Church, electors, who?
Why is the Labour Party ignoring those who agree with divorce? I live in Italy, and as a Catholic I don’t support divorce but the fact that the country I live in gives me the right to choice, that is paramount because I believe in democracy. It’s wrong to force people to stay married if they don’t want to be.
In Malta we do have a secular way of ending marriages, and that’s through a civil annulment, but only if both spouses agree. These people can then marry again civilly.
A civil annulment in Malta is identical to a church annulment. There must have been a “mistake” when saying ‘I do’. No other reason is acceptable. Both parties have to agree, go to court, take oaths, and lie through their teeth that they made a mistake. The judgements are then filled with cut-ad-paste case-law, and annulments are churned out like pastizzi.
A separation in Malta is a spitting image of a divorce in every single conceivable way from start to finish – civil, economical and socially – minus the right to remarry.
There is absolutely no need for any United Nations style debate about introducing divorce. We have it already.
All that is needed is a minor amendment in our civil code, that gives the CHOICE for any one of the separated couple, the right to remarry. This is a simple matter of paperwork that is handled by the registry.
Why doesn’t a PN MP bring before parliament a private member’s bill on divorce…that would wrap up the issue nicely before the 2013 election!
if you check out the guy behind JM, you will have so much to say!!! believe me!
Why don’t you say it yourself?