The decisions we allow others to make for us

In May 2011, Malta made history.

More than 70% of eligible voters turned out for a referendum that asked a simple but deeply divisive question: Should divorce become legal?

When the votes were counted, 53.2% said yes.

The significance of that decision went far beyond marriage. Before divorce was introduced, ending a marriage depended largely on securing an annulment after a lengthy process. Whether your application succeeded or failed was ultimately in the hands of others.

The referendum changed that. It transformed something that had long depended on permission into something people could claim as a right.

Fifteen years later, that moment still raises an important question: When should people's lives be shaped by their own choices, and when should they depend on the discretion of someone else?

More than a debate with the church

In 2011, Humanists Malta was still a young movement.

A Facebook group had brought together a few hundred people who had previously felt isolated in their views. The organisation itself had only recently been registered. The divorce campaign was the first major public debate in which humanists found themselves on the same side as a majority of Maltese voters.

At the time, it was easy to see the campaign as a clash between secular and religious ideas. But looking back, the picture was more complex.

Many believers supported divorce. Many still collaborate with humanists today on issues of shared concern. The deeper issue was never religion alone. It was the question of authority.

Who gets to decide how someone lives their life?

The real challenge was not faith, but the power of institutions and individuals to make decisions that profoundly affect others without being accountable for them.

A Humanist Principle

At the heart of humanism is a simple belief: people should have both the freedom and the responsibility to work out for themselves what makes a good life.

There is no infallible authority, no final text, no institution with all the answers. Instead, humanists place their trust in reason, evidence, empathy and open discussion.

That does not mean everyone will agree. In fact, people often disagree deeply about what is right and wrong. But humanism argues that these disagreements are best resolved through dialogue and accountability rather than obedience to unquestionable authority.

The obvious threat to this idea is dogma, where conclusions are handed down before individuals have a chance to think for themselves.

Less obvious, but often just as powerful, is discretion.

When someone's job, residence, permit or status depends entirely on the goodwill of another person, that authority effectively gains control over important aspects of their life. Rights become favours. Security becomes uncertainty.

The story of Yusupha Dibassey

The recent case of Yusupha Dibassey illustrates this problem vividly.

Dibassey arrived in Malta from Gambia in 2008, when he was just 23 years old. Although his asylum claim was rejected, he was allowed to remain under a temporary status that permitted him to work. The catch was that his documents had to be renewed roughly every three months.

Over eighteen years, that meant around seventy renewals.

During that time, he became a familiar figure in Malta's cultural scene as DJ Dollarino. He participated in Refugee Week events year after year and eventually joined the festival's advisory group.

Then, on 10 August 2026, he went to renew his documents and was detained.

No one disputes that his status was technically temporary. Yet supporters argue that after allowing him to live and work in Malta for nearly two decades, the state had effectively encouraged him to build a life here.

The issue is not simply whether the law was followed. It is whether a person's future should remain permanently dependent on a status that can be withdrawn at any moment, even after eighteen years of contribution and participation.

When a favour lasts long enough, many people naturally begin to experience it as a right. The problem is that the law may still treat it as a favour.

Small country, big questions

Malta's size creates a unique reality.

In a small country, people know each other. Politicians, business leaders, public officials and community figures often move in the same social circles. They attend the same weddings, village feasts and professional events.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this. It comes with the territory.

Problems arise when significant decisions are made through personal influence rather than transparent rules. When contracts, appointments or permits depend too heavily on relationships that the public cannot see, trust begins to erode.

The public inquiry into Daphne Caruana Galizia's assassination warned about the dangers of a culture where power can operate without sufficient accountability. The concerns repeatedly raised by local and international institutions point to the same challenge: how to ensure that decisions affecting citizens' lives are governed by clear rules instead of personal discretion.

The abortion issue

The clearest recent example concerns women prosecuted for having an abortion. Abortion remains a crime under the Criminal Code, and a woman found to have induced her own miscarriage can still, in principle, face imprisonment. Within the span of a year, two women were convicted, receiving a suspended sentence after a doctor reported them.

Robert Abela's response has not been to reform the law. He has argued that this legislature lacks a mandate to decriminalise abortion, noting that the issue appears nowhere in Labour's electoral manifesto. Instead, he has pledged that no woman will be sent to prison for the offence for as long as he remains Prime Minister.

The mechanism he has identified is the constitutional prerogative of mercy, under which the President, acting on Cabinet's advice, may commute or reduce a sentence imposed by courts.  Abela has been explicit that a woman would first have to petition Cabinet for such relief. Momentum described the arrangement as “feudal”, and no more accurate term has emerged since. What is being offered is not a reform in the law, still less a guarantee against prosecution. 

It is a personal assurance, valid only for as long as the individual making it remains in office, and only available to the woman who knows, or is advised, to seek his intervention directly.

The lesson from 2011

The divorce referendum remains one of Malta's most significant democratic moments because it changed more than family law.

It demonstrated that an area of life previously governed by permission could be transformed into a right.

That lesson remains relevant today.

Whether the issue is immigration, equality, public appointments or any other aspect of public life, the same question deserves to be asked: Why is this still a matter of discretion?

And if people depend on it, could it instead become a right that everyone can understand, rely on and trust?

Because a healthy democracy is not measured by how generously power is exercised. It is measured by how little people need to depend on power's goodwill in the first place.