We need to speak on electoral reform

The petition for constitutional reform of the electoral system initiated by Il-Kollettiv and fronted by former Labour MEP Cyrus Engerer argues that the ‘greatest principle of a representative democracy is that every vote counts’. An equally sacrosanct principle, the petition adds, is that ‘the will of the electorate be accurately reflected in the election result’. 

The petition asks parliament to open up a broad consultation process, discuss the introduction of a national threshold that would lead to a fairer system. 

These are aims that this leader has consistently supported. Unfortunately, electoral reform talks to make the system more representative, proportional and fair over the years have always been torpedoed by the two main political parties on the false premise that pluralism risks creating instability and making the country ungovernable. 

To understand the need for electoral reform, we have to understand the current reality in Malta’s parliament to realise how absurd the situation is. 

Parliament is today composed of 79 MPs. A simple proportion shows that each of these MPs represents around 3,700 voters, based on the number of valid votes cast in the last general election. 

At least 12 of these MPs were elected through a post-election mechanism intended to boost the number of female MPs. This special mechanism only kicks in if two parties are represented in parliament. 

It is therefore very ironic that ADPD, whose candidates collectively polled 4,747 votes across Malta and Gozo in 2022 is not represented in parliament. Based on the simple proportion presented above, the Green Party should have been assured of at least one seat. 

The only reason why ADPD is not represented in parliament is because the threshold to get elected is district based and thus a candidate must poll around 3,700 votes on a single district instead. 

The irony with this system is that a single independent candidate who can garner 3,700 votes on just one district could end up in parliament, whereas a political party that manages to obtain 20,000 votes or more across the whole country (around 7% based on valid votes cast in the 2022 general election) could miss the parliamentary bus completely. 

This is unfair because it can disenfranchise a whole swath of voters, making parliament unrepresentative of society. 

One may argue that third parties have not been successful because people have simply chosen not to vote for them. While partially true, this is a very simplistic argument often made by those who want a two-party system to perpetuate forever. The truth is that the two major political parties have over the years made several changes to the electoral system to suit their agenda. 

In its unadulterated form, the district-based single transferable vote system is candidate-focussed system that ignores the collective strength of a political party in terms of votes – in short it is the seats a party wins that count for victory and not the votes it obtains. This is what effectively happened in 1981 and which prompted a five-year-long political crisis. 

In the aftermath of the 1981 debacle, the Labour and Nationalist parties amended the Constitution several times over to give more weight to the votes obtained by the parties when determining victory in a general election. 

They basically introduced the principle that the votes obtained by a political party nationwide should not be ignored. But this only applied in situations where the district-based system only returned MPs from two parties. 

Indeed, the constitutional amendment of 1987 ensured that the political party that obtained an absolute majority of votes in the country would be assigned extra seats to ensure a parliamentary majority of at least one if it ended up with fewer seats after the district-by-district process is over. 

In 1996, another constitutional amendment extended the same principle adopted 11 years earlier to a situation where the winning party only obtains a relative majority. 

A subsequent amendment ensured strict proportionality between parliamentary seats and votes obtained nationwide but again this was limited to a situation where the district-based system returns MPs from only two political parties. 

There should be no qualms to amend the electoral system further to ensure proportional representation based on nationwide support is introduced, irrespective of what the district-based system returns. 

Indeed, such a system was proposed by Professor Anton Buhagiar in the 1990s when electoral reform was being discussed. The system would still see MPs elected on a district basis but the final composition of parliament would proportionally reflect the number of votes obtained nationwide. This means that after the district-wide process is finalised, the parties that contested the election would be awarded additional seats to reflect the national vote. In this way, ADPD would have been assured at least one seat in the last general election. 

To mitigate against potential instability caused by excessive fragmentation, a national threshold can be introduced so that only political parties that surpass it will be represented in parliament. Based on the current parliamentary setup, each MP in parliament represents 3,700 voters, or 1.3% of all valid votes cast. This threshold may be too low but a threshold ranging between 3% and 5% would ensure that a party represented in parliament has some critical mass. 

The question we should be asking ourselves in the aftermath of the European and local council elections is, should our electoral system ensure that an increasingly variegated electorate is represented in parliament? 

In our view, the answer is yes and this is why we support the parliamentary petition presented by Il-Kollettiv. It is high time that an honest discussion with the intent to enact meaningful change should kick off. And if some of the documents from past attempts are retrieved and dusted, the blue prints already exist for a system that is fair and proportional.