Divorce Bill: JPO brands Sunday Times report as 'total misrepresentation of facts'

The Sunday Times claimed that the SMS had been sent by “someone else” in the House of Representatives.

Pullicino Orlando simply posted a comment in the Timesofmalta.com article to say "This article is a total misrepresentation of facts."

According to The Sunday Times, this was “the first point raised by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi” during the urgent meeting of the PN parliamentary group on Wednesday. The Sunday Times also claimed that the majority of MPs, including the more vociferous ones, “remained silent during the meeting".

“Those who spoke criticized Pullicino Orlando for the way he had decided to go about bringing the divorce issue on the party’s agenda... It is true that the party had to discuss the divorce issue, which it has been sidelining for years, but there are different ways to get to this. An out-of-the-blue Private Member's Bill was surely not the cleverest of ways to get the PN to discuss divorce," an anonymous party source was quoted as saying.

The Sunday Times also claimed that Nationalist MPs Jesmond Mugliett, Robert Arrigo and Jean Pierre Farrugia “criticised Pullicino Orlando for his strategy to bring the issue onto the party's agenda but acknowledged the need to discuss such an issue which was becoming more of a reality, especially with the sharp rise in separations”.

According to The Sunday Times, apart from Gonzi, who made his personal views known, others who were “dead set” against the introduction of divorce were Justice Minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici and Transport Minister Austin Gatt.