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Matthew Vella
The political landscape will soon have its new ‘kid’ on the block after long-standing advocates for the introduction of divorce, Emmy Bezzina and John Zammit, are set to form a new political party.
In comments to MaltaToday, lawyer and former Labour candidate Emmy Bezzina said the party would focus on an agenda based on the introduction of divorce, gay rights, abortion, cohabitation, illegitimate children, and “the constant interference of the local Catholic Curia on sensitive issues such as marriage annulments.”
Bezzina said he would be announcing the name of the party shortly in a press conference. The sole two candidates, Bezzina and Zammit, said they already have a team of volunteers and financial backers supporting the party.
“If we generate a positive response in the forthcoming elections, we are not ruling out a long-term campaign based on the national elections,” Bezzina said, who along with John Zammit, has been the figurehead for the Men’s Rights Association and the Divorce Movement.
The duo have not yet declared with which political grouping in the European Parliament they would sit if elected in June.
In Bezzina’s traditional vein, one of the party’s political objectives would see the Curia as one of its targets. The new party will tackle the “secret agreements between the PN and the Curia, the lack of decisiveness in the MLP, the arrogance and lust for power in the leadership of the two main parties, and the parochial political garb of local parties and independent groups.”
Bezzina also attacked the PN and MLP saying they were not suited to be elected to the European Parliament, accusing them of double-standards on both the local and European scene. He said that both Zammit and himself have been instrumental in raising a number of social issues which had been “left under the social carpet so that the interests of the Nationalist Party in liaison with the Malta Curia be safeguarded.”
Bezzina insisted that divorce legislation and gay rights will have to be introduced in Malta on the grounds of discrimination to one’s private and family life, enshrined principles in the European Convention on Fundamental Rights. “This can be achieved despite the unpublicised agreement between the Nationalist Government and the European Commission intended to safeguard the interest of the Catholic Church in Malta.”
Bezzina also said the new party will be carrying a European identity, and will seek to remove the entrenchment of the Catholic religion from the Constitution. “This new party is a party for everyone who has Malta’s pluralistic and cosmopolitan new European image at heart. We are the ideal candidates for the new European Malta.”
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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