Pullicino Orlando, Bartolo present new joint private member's bill on divorce

Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Labour MP Evarist Bartolo today presented a joint private members' bill on divorce that now supersedes Pullicino Orlando's original bill - filed originally in July.

Speaking at the bill’s launch, pro-divorce committee chairperson Dr Deborah Schembri explained that the amendments to be bill are being presented to bring Pullicino Orlando's original private members’ bill in line with Maltese Civil Law.

Asked if the amendments would push back discussion on the bill itself, Pullicino Orlando was unable to confirm whether the bill’s placing on the schedule is unchanged. He referred to commitments by the Prime Minister that the bill will be discussed in parliament sometime in 2011.

The bill proposes that for divorce to be granted to a couple, the necessary grounds are that the spouses must have lived apart for four years (or be already legally separated for at least for years), the couple should have no prospect of reconciliation, and that spouses and dependent family members are adequately maintained.

Schembri said that care has been taken to ensure that the bill is not a “quick-fix” or an escape route for anyone not willing to shoulder their responsibilities. At the same time, she said, the amendments were fashioned to ensure that “the divorce process is an unlengthy [sic] one.”

The bill also allows couples who already “have done through the personal process of personal separation do not have to start over, but have their agreement or judgement recognised,” Schembri said. According to the proposed amendments, couples with separation procedures pending for four years can also ask the court to “turn these into divorce procedures so as not to have precious time wasted in court.”

Attempting to address two “issues” with one stone, Schembri said that the proposed amendments also seek “to better certain aspects of separation legislation” – “problems” which she said were “never tackled.”

These “problems,” she said, dealt with the way maintenance is granted, how maintenance is given to dependent family members who are students under the age of 23, and court discretion with regards to when community of acquests is halted.

Schembri stressed that the proposed bill will not have any effect on separations already decided through agreements or court judgements, affect maintenance, welfare, care, and custody or access to children, or the rights couples have to opt for separations or seek a declaration of annulment. “In instances of remarriage, maintenance would stop.”

Asked to state whether their respective leaders knew of the proposed amendments before these were announced by the Moviment Iva, Bartolo affirmed that Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat knew. Pullicino Orlando however only said that when he originally proposed the bill, “I spoke of amendments”.

Also asked if he knew whether any government MPs support the bill, Pullicino Orlando would only say that he did. He declined to name or even number these MP’s saying only that they would declare themselves in favour “when the time comes.”

Speaking during the press conference, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando maintained that the only difference between the divorce being proposed now and separation “is only that divorce allows couples to remarry.”

While the PN is still reportedly internally debating divorce, it is expected that the motion will be debated in Parliament this January, while it remains to be seen if Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi will be calling a referendum during 2011.

The pro-divorce campaign also includes Alternattiva Demokratika chairperson Michael Briguglio and former Nationalist minister Michael Falzon – who were absent during the announcement of the amendments.