Youths mingle on the streets of Paceville, up the coast from Valletta, Malta, December 7.
VALLETTA, (Reuters):
EMMY BEZZINA is a frustrated and angry man. Frustrated because he is unable to divorce a wife he left years ago, angry at his country's ban on divorce that he says makes Malta the laughing stock of Europe.
The 56-year-old has launched his own political party to rally support to liberalise laws in this tiny Mediterranean island which is the European Union's (EU) smallest state, and arguably, on paper at least, its most socially conservative.
The predominantly Catholic nation of 400,000 people that is squeezed onto a rock in the Mediterranean south of Italy joined the EU last year.
Abortion is completely illegal in Malta, the only European country where marriage cannot be dissolved by divorce.
"Many members of the EU didn't know there was no divorce or abortion," said Bezzina. Malta's leaders, he said, tend to avoid the issues when meeting their foreign counterparts.
"These people would be made the butt of ridicule if they were to speak about what goes on in Malta, so they prefer to keep their mouths shut," the lawyer told Reuters in an interview amid stacks of papers in his studio in Malta's capital Valletta.
In a country dominated since independence from Britain in 1964 by two parties - the conservative Nationalists and centre-left Labour - Bezzina's Alpha party has made little headway, and he is tolerated with amusement by the government.
Across the sandstone piazza - nothing is very far from anything else in Malta - a government minister involved in family policies smiles when asked about Bezzina.
PULSE
"He doesn't have his finger on the pulse. People are very afraid (of divorce)," said Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, junior minister for justice and home affairs, whose office is dominated at both ends by large oil paintings of Christ.
"The big fear is that we are portrayed as bigoted fundamentalist Roman Catholics and that is surely not the case.
"It isn't difficult to understand. Most people in Malta have been brought up in the Roman Catholic religion, they feel that divorce isn't something that helps the family unit."
The Maltese look north across the Mediterranean, Mifsud Bonnici says, and see declining family values in countries such as France, Germany and Britain where divorce is commonplace.
"Malta certainly stands out because she's the exception to the general rule. But it doesn't mean we must necessarily follow suit."
HIGHEST DIVORCE RATE
On the contrary, Mifsud Bonnici says other countries in Europe are more likely to move away from social liberalism, citing the Italian government's increasingly conservative stance on abortion and the likelihood that Spain's gay marriage law would be repealed by a future centre-right government.
Britain has the highest divorce rate among EU members, who have widely diverging histories on the issue. Staunchly Catholic Ireland allowed divorce only in 1997, whereas elsewhere in the world, Chile legalised it a year ago and the Philippines is among the few countries where it is still banned.
Even the pro-divorce Bezzina admits that the Maltese would probably vote against divorce in a referendum. But that does not mean the island is full of happy families.
"Close to one third of the island is either separated or about to be, or is sleeping round with some other partners," Bezzina says.
Malta's unhappily married couples have three options if they want to live apart.
Like Bezzina, they can just do it, having children with another partner but remaining married to the first; they can apply for a religious or secular annulment - in which they have to prove before a tribunal that the marriage never really existed or was based on a fraudulent premise; or they can get what Malta calls a 'separation'.
With separation, a legal ruling establishes practical details such as the division of property and rights to see children, but the couples remain officially married - meaning they cannot re-marry and, the law actually states, must remain faithful.
"One can but smile when the judge warns the couple: 'Listen: you are now legally separated but that does not mean you can have a partner or have sex with anybody else,' - when the new partner is waiting outside so they can go off together hand-in-hand," said Bezzina.
"These things really do tickle me to my core."
The government, which says there are 400 applications for separation every year, denies the system is hypocritical.
"We're not issuing chastity belts from the state. We have no satellite detectors to see who's entering whose house," says Mifsud Bonnici. "Adultery isn't a crime.
EXTRA-MARITAL AFFAIR
"If someone wants to have an extra-marital affair, it's not the state's problem, it's his problem."
For Bezzina, Malta's ban on divorce and abortion - which means women determined to terminate pregnancies discreetly travel to Italy or Britain - shows it is a country "infested, manipulated and monopolised by the Catholic Church".
He admits that almost no one in Malta would vote to legalise abortion, but says both abortion and divorce should be available as a matter of right.
Bezzina's political party faces an almost impossible struggle against Malta's entrenched two-party system and a youth that is disaffected with politics.
On the streets of Paceville, up the coast from Valletta, drunken young men loudly chat up girls who totter from vodka bar to "fun pub" in skimpy clothes that belie the island's conservative nature.
"They don't care what the Catholic Curia (Church administration) is saying. However, they don't care about politics either so I cannot tell you that we have support there," says Bezzina.
He sees a glimmer of hope for his liberal agenda in the EU where he believes Malta may be forced to change its position on divorce and abortion under human rights laws.
Malta included a clause in its EU accession treaty that excludes it from any future EU rules on abortion and Mifsud Bonnici dismisses Bezzina's threat since the EU does not usually impose rules on internal social matters.
"Emmy thinks (divorce) can be challenged at an EU level. I don't know how that could be, but lawyers are very innovative."
