[WATCH] Pullicino Orlando’s impassioned plea for reason against ‘campaign of lies’

In one of the most impassioned of debates so far, Zwieg Bla Divorzju representative Dr Robert Tufigno was faced by the ire of an audience which included entrepreneur Kevin Decesare, who is separated, who accused Tufigno of insulting his sense of the family.

Decesare said he has been separated for 17 years and that the Moviment Zwieg bla Divorzju is showing no "empathy" for those who are in a similar situation. Decesare said he felt "insulted" by the way Tufigno alluded that separated people do not try hard enough when it came to solving their marital problems.

The discussion drew a harsh reaction from divorce bill promoters Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Evarist Bartolo. Pullicino Orlando reacted strongly to Tufigno’s comment that the private member’s bill had been “pushed forward by someone who might have personal interests in doing so”.

 “I did not propose the bill for personal reasons. I saw the suffering of the people and instead of ignoring the massive pink elephant in the room, as a representative of the public, I did what I had to do,” the Nationalist MP said.

He said the divorce bill was necessary to regularise the position of so many families whose marriages had broken down and were already living with new partners and even bringing up children born out of wedlock.

“When I presented the bill I was telling MPs ‘let’s debate this’ but I never imposed it on anybody,” Pullicino Orlando told Tufigno.

To the applause of his audience, Pullicino Orlando told Tufigno whether he should think that the Prime Minister had his own personal reasons, “because it was him who proposed the referendum.”

Echoing the sentiments of Decesare, and a woman whose marriage had been annulled and was present with her children in the audience, Pullicino Orlando said the ‘no’ movement’s concept of an “ideal family” was not the one Zwieg Bla Divorzju was pushing.

“My personal life is ideal because it is based on love and I respect my children and my partner’s child alike. For me this is family, where there is love and not hypocrisy.”

Without mentioning names, he said a newspaper’s editorial against divorce had been penned by an editor who had “broke apart his own family but still chose to stress the importance of lasting marriage. This is hypocrisy.”

“The fact that I hear MPs talk of the value of a lasting marriage, when they themselves have no idea of what respect of marriage means... I am asking you to be realistic,” Pullicino Orlando said.

He also attacked Tufigno’s claim that remarriage would produce 'serial marriages' and a string of families impossible to maintain. “Right now there are people who have gone from one cohabiting arrangement to another five times in a row... they can do it every week if they want. Do you think that unknown fathers and single mothers are just cropping up like that?”

He also said the scaremongering tactics employed by the no movement were redolent of the 1980s: “They went into parish churches scaring people, brainwashing them... and scaring people about spousal maintenance: no judge is crazy enough to trample upon spousal maintenance of a family.”

Feeling “offended” by Tufigno’s comments, Bartolo reiterated that he had “no personal interest” in promoting the divorce bill.

“I am happily married with my wife and I have no intention of leaving her,” he said passionately. “What’s wrong in not denying others what I have enjoyed?”

He added that divorce will not affect those who believe in the sacrament of marriage. “Those who are tied by Church marriage will remain so. But if there are at least even five persons who need divorce, what right do I have to deny it to them?”

Replying to members of the audience who shared their experience of broken marriages, Tufigno said that whilst he felt for them, “divorce is not the solution”.

He claimed that with divorce, upcoming generations would not see “the strong family Malta has enjoyed so far” and that “in the long run, we will end up a weak family model”.