The man who said ‘No’ | Adrian Vassallo

Dr Adrian Vassallo certainly sticks out on the Opposition backbench. Openly dismissive of Labour leader Joseph Muscat’s claims to being ‘progressive’, the family doctor from Ta’ Xbiex appears to be ideologically cut from the same conservative cloth as Lawrence Gonzi, Tonio Borg and Austin Gatt. Certainly he bears little resemblance to the increasingly liberal image projected by Muscat; and this difference came dramatically to the fore last Wednesday, when Vassallo became the only Labour MP to vote ‘No’ to the divorce bill at second reading.

Emerging from Parliament after the vote, a visibly unimpressed Joseph Muscat warned Vassallo that his ‘No’ vote would invariably entail “consequences”.

Two days later I meet the rebel backbencher at his Ta’ Xbiex residence, and – after being inspected in the hallway by a suspicious one-year-old mongrel named Skippy (picked up from near a skip, his owner explains) – I ask Dr Vassallo what “consequences” he thinks the Labour leader had in mind.

He shrugs. “I have no idea. You’ll have to ask Joseph Muscat.”

After a little prodding he consents to expand. “There are only two possibilities I can think of,” he muses. “They might stop me from contesting the next election – which I doubt, because it will only make the whole party look ridiculous – or more likely they will allow me to contest, but then put spokes in the wheels, and try to make it as difficult as possible for me to get elected. Having said that, there might be other consequences, too. I don’t know. Either way, I took it as an indirect threat.”

I ask him if there has been any contact between himself and Muscat since the vote in parliament. “No. The only party official I have spoken to recently on this subject was (deputy leader) Anglu Farrugia. I asked him if the free vote still stood, and he told me yes, it still stands. Mind you, it was always a free vote ‘tra virgolette’. But even without the free vote I would still have voted No…”

Vassallo hints that he was not alone in the PL to disagree with the party leader’s declared stand on the issue. “I got no support from others in the party. I know there were some who felt the same way I did. But when it came to the crunch they all voted how they voted…”

What about at street level? As a GP, Adrian Vassallo gets to meet constituents in their own homes all the time, and as such has a stethoscope permanently on the pulse of Labour’s grass-root support. How do his voters stand on the issue?

He smiles wryly. “Oh, if I were to tell you all the antics (praspar) Labour voters got up to in the referendum! I know people who voted ‘Yes’ just to spite the Church… because they took offence at a homily, or during the Our Lady of Sorrows procession, or at something the Bishop of Gozo said that they misunderstood. There were others who voted ‘Yes’ as a protest vote against the Nationalist government. And these are just the people I know myself…”

Like other anti-divorce campaigners before him, Vassallo holds the media partly responsible for ‘distorting’ the issue for political reasons. “Our station [One TV] was definitely biased.”

At the risk of repeating all the pre-referendum arguments, I ask him the reason for his own position. Not so much the fact that he is against divorce – but rather, the zeal with which he has fought his corner within the party. 

He takes a puff on his trademark pipe. “I disagree with divorce because it breaks up families. It’s got nothing to do with religion. If I were Muslim I would still say divorce is wrong. Some people need it, I don’t deny that. But the fact that it is a solution to some people doesn’t make it a good thing in its own right. It will only create more problems than it will solve.”

Adopting a ‘don’t-say-I-didn’t-warn-you’ tone of voice, Vassallo launches into an apocalyptic vision of the repercussions he claims Malta will now have to face.

“We are already seeing an increase in serious crime, committed largely by people from broken homes. With divorce you will have more broken families, which means more serious crime. We will have many more children with psychological problems. Then there’s the issue of maintenance and the so-called ‘guarantees’. What guarantees? How can a man on a relatively low wage afford that sort of maintenance? These things were never fully explained before the referendum. The ‘Yes for divorce’ movement played on people’s heart strings. They kept asking, why can’t people have a second chance? Why, why, why, why? They never said anything abut a third, fourth, fifth and sixth chance. They never talked about the problems that will be faced by single women in government housing, who have to give up their residency upon getting married. What will happen to them with divorce? We never talked about married couples where husband and wife are co-owners of a business. How will divorce affect the business, when one or the other spouse remarries…?”

As we have agreed not to rake up all the old arguments of the campaign, I resist the impulse to counter these examples – for instance, by pointing out that we are already experiencing an increase in broken families, with or without divorce. Instead I ask him for his own interpretation of Labour’s rechristening as a ‘progressive’ party. As expected, he is less than enthusiastic about the idea.

“Progressive? What does it even mean? What do any of these labels mean? Progressive, conservative, liberal… in my opinion they are all meaningless really. If ‘progressive’ means introducing things which are harmful to society… in what way will we be ‘progressing’? Go to Paceville, and you’ll see what I mean. Is this progress? I don’t think so…”

I put to him, however, that the bulk of his own arguments are limited to merely opposing individual issues and developments. He has mounted personal campaigns against divorce, pornography in hotel rooms, prostitution in his own district, embryo freezing in the IVF process (more of which in a moment); he is adamantly averse to gay marriage, and one need hardly add that this opposition extends also to all the usual ‘phantom’ issues associated with ‘liberalism’: abortion, euthanasia and all that.

It seems, then, that Adrian Vassallo’s grand vision for Malta is simply to retain the status quo as much as possible. But what is he actually proposing that is in any way new?

“More discipline,” he replies after a pause. “Harsher sentences meted out by the courts…”

Meanwhile there are other issues coming up in the near future that Vassallo feels strongly about: not least IVF, which is currently the subject of a parliamentary debate to establish a regulatory framework within which the medical service may be provided.

Vassallo is characteristically blunt about his voting intentions: “If the laws allows for freezing of embryos, I will vote against.”

As with divorce, he explains that this is a matter of ‘conscience’, and as such is not up for discussion. “We are talking about human life here. A lot of people talk about IVF but don’t know exactly what it is. They think it’s all about a sperm meeting an ovum in a dish, and nine months later, hey presto! The mother is cradling a baby. But there’s much more to it than that… the process involves hyper-stimulation of a woman’s ovaries, after which between eight and 12 eggs will be fertilized. Of these, only two will be chosen for implantation. The rest are frozen. What do you think happens to them in the long run? They are discarded, naturally…”

Vassallo insists that all eight-12 fertilised eggs are to be considered as human beings endowed with full human rights, which technically makes the above process tantamount to abortion. I interject that this is at best an individual opinion of his, and as such is open to debate. He shrugs. “It’s a question of when human life begins.”

So when does human life begin, I enquire? Vassallo’s answer: “Ask God.” But what about people who don’t believe in God? He stares at me blankly for a second. “Don’t believe in God…. don’t believe in God…” he mumbles back. But his voice trails to nothing.

As it would be patently futile at this stage to embark on the oldest philosophical debate known to man, I draw his attention to another paradox surrounding the IVF issue. In the absence of any law regulating bioethics in Malta, private hospitals have been able to carry out the treatment unregulated since the late 1980s. Technically this means they are free to conduct multiple implants, freeze and discard embryos at will (though whether they actually do any of these things is another questions altogether). And yet, ironically, Vassallo himself would attempt to block legislation that would regulate the practice once and for all. Isn’t this a contradiction? Wouldn’t it be better to introduce legislation, than to leave everything as it is?

“They should have stopped local hospitals from providing the service from the beginning,” he immediately replies. “Without a legal framework in place there shouldn’t be IVF available in local clinics.”

But at the same time he is arguing that there shouldn’t be even a legal framework at all. He nods. “There shouldn’t.”

Effectively, then, it is not just embryo freezing that Vassallo opposes… but the process as a whole. By what right can he deny others medical treatment? Is it on religious grounds? And if so, isn’t this unfair on others who do not subscribe to the same religion?

Surprisingly, the man who earlier referred me to God for an answer to the question of human life, now insists that his opposition to IVF – along with abortion, euthanasia, divorce, cohabitation, and a host of other issues opposed by the Church – has “nothing to do with religion.”

“Religion is not the deciding factor,” he insists. “Yes, it’s true I have been caricatured as a Taliban, a fundamentalist, and so on; but my views come from my own background, my own experience, my own upbringing. These are all life and death issues we are talking about... even divorce, which deals with the family, and therefore the very foundation that brings life into the world.  I am a doctor. I have seen life and death up close. People have died in my hands and have been born into my hands. These are the things that form my conscience, not necessarily religion at all.”

While on the subject I can’t resist asking him what he makes of the proposal, heard with increasing frequency after the divorce result, regarding amending the Constitution to remove the clause (Article 2) which defines Malta as a Catholic country… among other privileges granted to the Church.

“As far as I am concerned it can even be removed,” he replies matter-of-factly.

How would he vote, if it came to that pass? “According to the majority view in my parliamentary group.”

Coming back to the conscience issue, which informed both Vassallo’s own vote, as well as that of the Prime Minister: isn’t there a danger that the same excuse can now be cited to absolve any political leader from his obligations to the electorate? I bring up the example of adultery, which was decriminalized in the early 1970s. The entire Nationalist Opposition voted against decriminalization, and the arguments were similar to those against divorce. Adultery breaks up families, it goes against individual conscience, etc. 

“I would have disagreed with the decriminalization of adultery at the time,” he replies. I confess this takes me by surprise. So he would have voted in line with the Opposition against his own party on this, too?

“It depends. Ideally, a party places an issue on its manifesto, and then enacts it once elected. If I were a Labour candidate before 1971, and the party placed decriminalization of adultery on its manifesto, I would certainly have withdrawn my candidature.”

Speaking of candidatures and their withdrawal, Dr Vassallo recently announced that this would be his last term as an MP. However, I find that he is now less categorical about his own political future. “There are still two years to go before the next election. Anything can happen in that time.”

Pressed to specify whether or not he will contest the next election (provided he is allowed to, of course), he concedes that there’s a “99.9% chance” he will call it a day.

“I’m approaching retirement age now, and I’m looking forward to having more time for my family and my hobbies. But there is also pressure from constituents…”

Vassallo admits he doesn’t want to go out with a whimper. “Once you start in politics, you have to know both when to enter and when to leave. From the second election I contested onwards, I was elected every time. I don’t want to contest and not get elected… like what happened to Louis Galea, Helen D’Amato and others. I will only contest if I am confident of being elected.”

Given the undeniable proximity of so many of his views to those of the PN, my final question is whether he has ever considered actually jumping ship (like Cyrus Engerer did in the opposite direction, on the same day as our interview). His emphatic ‘No’ comes out almost as a snort.

“I’d be betraying my constituents by doing that. And besides, the Nationalists would never vote for me anyway…”