Divorce is as inevitable as it is inalienable. No one will hold it back particularly those who have an interest so to do , not for the common good, but to protect their image well-founded in centuries of deceit and arrogance, suppression and manipulation , autocracy mingled with theocracy, irrespective of the colour donned for the occasion.

In my tiny country we have been besotted by a biting breed of black bugs which suck your blood away if you are in disharmony with their crude inquisitorial way of evaluating life. Many have suffered and been victimized but now that era is at an end. These black bugs have to be destroyed for the common good. Our Secular State must show that it is all-powerful in its domain. It must not even refer or consider the biting bugs any longer. The moment this breed attempts to bite, it has to be immediately flitted away with the same arrogance and intrusion that these bugs many-a-time destroyed the lives of others.

Divorce is the natural obverse of Marriage. It is an obviously consequential corollary of Marriage. Just as you have a right to marry, so you have a right to dissolve that marriage by means of Divorce. This has always been so, understood and grasped to be so, until an Institution deceived and frightened the manipulated by referring to a Divine Decree that was never intended for the natural right to marry and divorce.

Till 44 years ago, the reigns of our country was not in our hands. Our overlords conveniently abandoned the natural inalienable rights of our people to the controlling whims of these black bugs. The latter sucked us to death and renewed the process generation after generation. Then in 1975 the dawn commenced to crack the abysmal darkness of the Marriage domain in Malta by means of The Marriage Act which for the first time recognized foreign Divorce Judgements and Decrees to be enforceable in my country. However these black bugs crawled up once more in 1995 through a subterfuge of concocted religious nationalism. The offspring was a monstrous Marriage Law producing a hyena of Canonical Law impregnated into the supreme civil laws of our sovereign and independent State.

Malta must abort this hyena and give birth to a new Marriage Law symbolized in the female bare breasts representing the Marriage and its antithesis Divorce. Our EU Politicians must stop bothering for or referring to these biting black bugs : these are insignificant in a secular, pluralistic and cosmopolitan EU country like Malta. Our Civil Authorities must not permit canonistic insults fired at them . This is not synonymous of course with repressing the freedom of thought, of opinion , of communication and of expression as befits our Liberal Democratic country. However if these biting bugs annoy us, then they must be flitted away in no uncertain terms. This is what GONZI has to grasp, what MUSCAT is mastering, what FENECH ADAMI has not learnt!

Our Constitution has to be secularized too without denying fundamental, individual rights to anyone. All must have the same standing in the State but for the hierarchical lay institutions of our land, democratically elected by the people, for the people, and duly controlled by the people.

This signifies that any other control by autocratic institutions or States over our country and its people has to be eliminated forthwith. In this framework, there is an urgent need for a modern Maltese Marriage Act where all references to any religious institution, or to any Church and its Rules and Regulations , or any inter linking between Church & State has to be avoided. In truth we need a Maltese Marriage Act, not a Maltese Law which regulates Marriage also from the Canonical Law perspective.

Rather than beating about the bush, this new Marriage Law has to refer to legal procedures how to dissolve a Marriage, do away with Civil Annulments which would not have any legal bearing in a secular State, and regulate the mode and structures of how Divorce is obtained locally without the harassment , inconveniences and discriminations currently in vogue.
9. Considerations of whether one has married in accordance with the rites of the Catholic Church or any other Faith are totally irrelevant in such Civil Cases. Fortunately it is not the Catholic Curia [ particularly the Maltese one ] that will adjudge us for our afterlife!

[ Dr. Bezzina will be contesting the 2009 EU Parliamentary Elections in the interests of Alpha Liberal Democratic Party – alpha@emmybezzina.org. ]