Labour deputy leader Anġlu Farrugia told Parliament yesterday that divorce legislation had been introduced in Malta in 1975, when the state recognised divorce granted in another country.
This civil right had been granted because there were a number of Maltese women who had married members of the British Services who had divorced but could not remarry in Malta.
To date this civil right was being denied to Maltese who could not obtain a divorce from abroad. The Church had always accepted this recognition of divorce as a civil right. The Church itself had established procedures in giving dispensation to a Catholic to remarry if the first marriage to a person from another church ended in divorce.
As a civil right, one had to explain the divorce issue of people married under civil law and not under canon law. Otherwise one would be misinterpreting the law.
Dr Farrugia said divorce was for people who had married under the civil rite. One had to separate civil marriage from one conducted under Catholic rites which contained canonical obligations. Divorce was not an issue for him personally, because he had married within the Church where marriage was considered a sacrament.
He agreed with the Archbishop that there should not be any crusade on the issue. Neither should there be people in influential positions in the Church who did not distinguish between Church and state on the issue.
He said that the referendum proposed by the opposition called for a qualified divorce conditioned by the fact that the couple would have been separated for at least four years, where reconciliation attempts had definitely failed and where alimony had to continue to be given to the dependant members of the couple.
Dr Farrugia said that the conditions under which separation had been given by the courts would remain valid when the couple divorced. Under Maltese law, a spouse who did not pay alimony could be sentenced to prison.
Dr Farrugia criticised Dr Zammit Dimech for being unfair when quoting from the Private Members’ Bill, because his interpretation did not reflect the Bill.
The Labour Party parliamentary group had discussed the divorce issue because there was no electoral mandate and had unanimously agreed to the text in the motion a secret ballot. On the contrary, the Nationalist Party was not serene in discussing the issue, with influential persons trying to interfere and putting pressure on its MPs.
The government, in the House Business Committee, had made every possible attempt to delay the discussion on the issue.
Dr Farrugia said that the reality in the country was that there were a considerable number of people whose marriage had broken down beyond any hope of reconciliation. The state had to give these people the chance to a qualified divorce under civil law. He claimed that those people who tried to meddle in civil rights with canonical thinking were misinforming the public and usurping a civil right. The opposition wanted the electorate to be correctly informed and then decide in a referendum proposing a qualified divorce.
The motion extracted the salient points from the private members’ Bill limiting divorce to couples who had been separated at least four years where there was no hope of reconciliation and where alimony had to continue to be given to the dependant members of the family.
The referendum question, as proposed by the opposition, did not give a blank cheque to separated couples.
Dr Farrugia criticised the Nationalist government which said it was against divorce but had drafted a Bill on cohabiting couples, showing its irresponsibility and totally neglecting morality on the issue. Relationships between cohabiting couples were less stable than in a normal family.
If the electorate voted in favour in the referendum the Private Member’s Bill would be fine-tuned, with maximum priority given to children’s welfare and protection, he said.