Times: The winter of our discontent

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090210/opinion/the-winter-of-our-discontent

Tuesday, 10th February 2009 by Kenneth Zammit Tabona
Excerpt from the article

January 2009 has been and gone in a flurry of rain and disagreeable weather that is best soon forgotten. A dull anticlimactic month, as a rule, this particular January has been characterised by several ongoing debates between the government and the increasing number of people who have the temerity to think for themselves. Not a day passes without the government being criticised for this that or the other. Although some theorists say that this is healthy, I feel that carrying it to this, extreme is a rather hazardous gamble for a government who won the last election by a mere whisker despite promising the moon and several planets to boot!

...

Then, of course, there are the social issues. I find it hard to understand how the PN government, after having played a pro-Europe hand for so long and with such tenacity, can be so reluctant to accept social changes like divorce and same-sex marriage, to mention but a few subjects that many people who voted yes in the referendum imagined would become a reality once we joined Europe. We are told that there is no need to have divorce as there is already something like it in our laws, which is its equivalent but is not called divorce. We are told that there is no need to have same-sex marriage as it will be taken care of in the eventual cohabitation laws.

Unable to call a spade a spade, this government hides under euphemisms and displays all the defects and shortcomings of 'Dorothy's Friends' in The Wizard Of Oz!

So indoctrinated are we by the all pervasive power of the Catholic Church that Xarabank chose to air a discussion programme about homosexuality without one government representative on the panel. While the Prime Minister and the Minister for Social Policy probably watched the programme from the safe comfort of their homes, it was left to the Archbishop and Fr Anton Gouder, especially the latter, to squirm under a literal bombardment of scornful criticism that, by rights, should have been aimed at Lawrence Gonzi and John Dalli. So unfair!

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