It is remarkable how easily one can be misinterpreted. David Muscat writing in The Times on Tuesday - A National Treasure - finds it ironic that the New Zealand Greens are advocating a shift from a first-past-the-post system to a single transferable vote (STV) system while, he claims, The Green Party in Malta systematically attacks it.
I am delighted to inform Mr Muscat and his readers that he is not quite right. The Maltese Greens and the New Zealand Greens are on the same wavelength. We are both very critical of the antiquated and undemocratic first-past-the-post system.
The electoral system in Malta is technically a PR-STV system: proportional representation by single transferable vote. As a matter of historical curiosity the Nationalist Party objected to its introduction in Malta in 1921 precisely because it was designed to allow the participation of minorities. The Nationalists suspected that it was a British attempt to divide and rule. In fact, the British had proposed to adopt the system for themselves three years earlier. The proposal was rejected by Parliament at Westminster by just six votes in 1919. British conservatism has continued to inflict the first-past-the-post system on the British ever since.
An identical system to the one introduced in Malta was set up in Ireland in the same year. Since 1921 the Irish have enjoyed a multi-party system and a better articulated democracy than the Maltese. The fact that Ireland stayed out of World War II may have had something to do with the fact that while their multi-party start in 1921 developed without interruption, war and the suspension of the constitution, as well as the fact that Malta did not achieve independence until 43 years afterwards, gave our PR-STV system a turbulent passage.
The emergence of a polariser such as Dom Mintoff was no great help either. His Manichean legacy in our political culture affects the whole political spectrum in one way or another.
An electoral technique not adopted in Ireland but institutionalised in Malta is a system devised to eliminate smaller parties: block voting. Voters are instructed to vote for all the candidates of one party and only for those candidates in a deliberate attempt to defeat the STV element in our system. It was originally devised by the Nationalist Party. To heighten its effect, each party fields a very large number of candidates ensuring a delay in any possible transfer beyond its own candidate list and also scouring every electoral niche in each district. It is one of the reasons why it takes so long to reach the end of any Maltese election.
Block voting is also employed in internal party elections with one faction starving another of votes that could be 'inherited" by its rival through any STV process. In recent elections it has seemed to backfire badly for the PN. Local council election results in 2003 and 2002 show that in a number of instances PN insistence on block voting effectively starved the Greens of votes transferred after the elimination of the last PN candidate.
The beneficiary in each instance was a Labour Party candidate who had started out in the race with fewer votes than the Green candidate. Greens have no expectation or claim to such vote transfers. We are amused at the way the PN has insisted on cutting off its nose to spite its face. It is less amusing when we are blamed for a result deliberately engineered by the PN gurus. Our only fault boils down to participating in the democratic process. Block voting is their creation. Greens have consistently encouraged their supporters to make the best use of their STV options.
Block voting was rigidly enforced by the PN in the European Parliament elections with the final PN surplus after elimination of the last PN candidate going largely to waste. With eight PN candidates in the race, the PN would have had nothing to lose in allowing its voters to vote Green in their ninth preference. The result was the elimination of Arnold Cassola to the benefit of a third MLP candidate.
This diabolical persistence in block voting allows the suspicion that the PN prefers to maintain the two-party system even if it means allowing the MLP to win, just as long as the Greens are eliminated. It is their greatest compliment to us and the most convincing evidence of their enmity to the STV system.
Our peculiar political history has also produced major differences compared to the Irish situation. The 1987 constitutional amendments, better known as the 50 per cent +1 amendment, gave the first preference vote a crucial significance raising electoral hysteria to paroxysm. The emergence of the Green Party in 1989 and its 1.7 per cent result in the 1992 election revealed the shortsightedness of the 1987 amendment: it only works if only two parties are elected to Parliament. The combatants in the pre-1987 quasi civil war never contemplated the development of a multi-party system. They never guessed that their conflict produced our disgust and the desire for a better future.
Our rivals had come within a whisker of both being driven under the 50 per cent mark with no third party being elected. This would have permitted a near repeat of the 1981 crisis when a majority of the popular vote was not reflected in the seat majority. This event was the progenitor of the Gonzi Commission on electoral reform which reported to Parliament in 1995.
Although a serious attempt was made to establish a five per cent threshold which would allow representation for any significant minority, the Gonzi Commission failed. The failure was due to the other parties' lack of confidence in one another. Each attempted to take advantage of the situation assuming that the Greens would not make it over the threshold. They quarrelled over how to share the spoils. It will be of interest to Mr Muscat that during these discussions it was the PN that insistently proposed doing away with the STV element from our PR-STV system, not the Green Party.
While the other parties have left the issue in suspense for the past decade, the Greens have gone from strength to strength polling 9.3 per cent in the recent EP elections. The denial of democracy is palpable. The almost hermetic exclusion of Greens from television broadcasting with any domestic political relevance shows the extent to which our rivals acknowledge our continued growth regardless of the obstacles they have maintained in our path. They appear to dread the effect of an even playfield in politics.
With 29,000 votes to their credit, the Greens are a very significant reality denied representation by the 16.6 per cent district threshold. It is the country's democratic credentials which are at stake as long as we remain the only minimal pluralism member country in the EU. Applied across the continent, the Maltese electoral system would decimate European political parties. Europeans find our broadcasting system unbelievably undemocratic.
The social, economic, cultural and environmental cost of the two-party system and the zero sum politics it has consistently produced are widely recognised as an extravagance the country can no longer afford. Malta is ripe for change, a change for the better. The future was postponed in the 2003 election. It cannot be postponed forever.
Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.
harry.vassallo@alternattive.org.mt