Parliament must not act outside the electoral mandate given by the electorate and much less manipulate a serious social debate into a Machiavellian strategy to gain power.
The first one to do so was the Leader of the Opposition, who without even contesting the last general election - he was co-opted to Parliament - and oblivious of the sentiments of the party, declared his determination to present a Private Member's Bill on divorce. Later he specified that it would be presented after the next election when he hopes to become Prime Minister.
It would earn him the accolade of becoming the first Prime Minister to present a Private Member's Bill. A pity Alfred Sant did not present the Cottonera development as a 'Private Member's project; it might have spared him resignation and electoral defeat in 1998.
"Rubbish!" cried sitting Labour MP Adrian Vassallo, who reminded his leader that schizophrenia was not a quality of any future Prime Minister. Vassallo logically felt his political future was now not worth much following his public outcry against his leader's Private Bill proposal.
The Nationalist Party seemed immune from the confusion shown by the opposition on the 'D' issue until faced by a Private Member's Bill presented, not by the Leader of the Opposition, but by one within its very own ranks.
The Prime Minister, who is opposed to divorce, seems the only one to remember that there is a thinking world outside the four walls of Parliament, and in the light of all these contradictions said that democracy is best expressed by the people and not by MPs who do not have an electoral mandate to justify their 'private' feelings.
The only difficulty in the Prime Minister's near-perfect democratic logic is that the history of referendums in Malta is nothing short of horrific. Referendums had not managed to finally decide the Independence question and much less the issue of EU membership, because the political parties have on both occasions hijacked and turned them into a partisan battleground.
The referendum is the best example of direct democracy where the electorate decides for itself by removing intermediaries in the form of their elected Member of Parliament who tend to first request our vote and later, in the name of representative democracy, proceed to vote in whichever manner their political interest tells them to.
The referendum, therefore, is the occasion when our elected representatives stand aside and allow us to determine through a 'Yes' or a 'No' whether a single issue is to become state policy or not.
The nauseating opportunism of the political parties, however, has meant that in those extremely rare occasions a referendum was held, everything was done to de-legitimise it. Fresh in our memory is Sant's notorious claim in 2003 that the 'No' vote had won the day because the Labour Party had directed the electorate to either abstain or invalidate the vote so that the addition of these negatives to those voting No to EU membership would ensure it victory.
The Labour Party's intention was to tie up the No vote to its electoral wagon at the subsequent general election. For this to succeed the referendum was to be made inconclusive at all costs. It is to be noted that at no time has the Labour Party ever accepted the result of the EU referendum - not even under Muscat.
So, if the current legislature has no democratic mandate to impose a decision on the divorce issue, can it be that a referendum is in the offing?
If so, then the political class must avoid turning it into a democratic farce, or worse still, into a platform for their next electoral campaigns. Malta deserves better than that. Equally, MPs must stop insulting our intelligence with all these manoeuvres of Private Member's Bills. Enough is enough!
Parliament must first of all rethink the current rules on holding referendums. Exact provisions have to be included determining a quota of valid voters necessary for the validity of a referendum in the hope that a person who does not vote is simply considered as not interested to do so, thereby stopping any Sant-like intellectual from magically turning an abstention into a vote.
If a pre-determined number of voters refuse to vote, then it is the entire consultation exercise that is put into doubt as being unrepresentative of the electorate.
Equally, it must never be tied to a general election; the two being completely different democratic exercises. A constitutional amendment should be proposed removing the validity of any law, directly or indirectly, inconsistent with the outcome of the referendum approved by the absolute majority of the electorate, with the Constitutional Court as the only arbiter of the issue.
This measure would eliminate political opportunism from perverting the will of the electorate expressed in referendums. In other words, if the electorate decides an issue at a referendum, subsequent governments have to accept the verdict for at least the span of one legislature.
This would ensure that the referendum result becomes binding, thereby leaving voters to freely choose the government they prefer without any conditioning of the issue already decided at a referendum.