Keeping proportion in every nook and cranny

Do not bet too much that next week's talks on possible changes to the electoral law will lead swiftly, or at all, to agreement between the political parties. But light a candle in the hope that they shall. It is more than time that the electoral system be structured in such a way that the seats won by a party approximate as closely as mathematically possible to the number of valid votes given to them by the electorate.

It is not such a difficult job, really, though edges have to be polished and rounded up. There have been various attempts to devise a better model. They came from within the political system as well as from outside it. Lack of success to date was not due to the enormity of the task.

The political will to work out the basics and compromise on differences at the margin just was not there. Whether it will be there this time remains to be seen. One cannot say whether the talks will open with a carry forward of a key point of disagreement from the last time round.

Then, the Malta Labour Party wanted the basis of the system to be valid first-count preferences. The Nationalist Party wanted to move away from the first count and place the basis on inherited preferences.

One can argue about the two different approaches until the cows bring their calves home. Our system remains the Single Transferable Vote, whereby a voter starts from his first preference, and (unless he decides to stop there, as a few do) moves down, numbering preferences without break. If there is a break the vote is no longer transferred.

The system is best recognised by the first-count totals. That was basic to the two amendments to the Constitution, which ensured that a party gaining the majority of valid votes in a general election would have the right to govern. If the majority is relative (less than 50 per cent), but only candidates from two parties are returned, that right also prevails.

The first preference key that opened those doors has worked well enough. It is not perfect. One could argue that it is not fair to snuff out preferences to a candidate who is not elected, which is what happens when such preferences are not transferred to candidates outside his/her party.

Nothing is perfect. What a system has to provide for is the clearest, most immediately recognised and easily calculated measure. That is what the majority amendments did.

Should the Nationalists again reject that approach, and insist on basing the system on final preferences - which anyway would still snuff out the value of preferences that are not ultimately transferred to a candidate who gets elected - one can easily predict that no agreement will be reached. The cows might as well stay out there under a downcast sky.

For it will be more downcast than ever, if there is a new attempt that fails over old disagreements.

Negotiations are all about stancing and tactics, including putting up proposals with which to trade as evening creeps into night. The MLP has not given any hints of how it will come out of its corner, as yet. The PN, while not referring to the vote-count it would prefer - first or final count - has already indicated one punch it will throw as its steps out from its own corner into the negotiating ring.

The general secretary was careful to tell the media that his party felt that the right to vote should be extended to all Maltese living in EU countries. There are arguments for and against, and one would not be surprised if the MLP, on its part, gave more weight to those against.

There are at least two facets to that issue. One is clear, and lies in an area regarding which the political parties can easily take a short cut, though it is unlikely that the possibility to use it is a bargaining counter will be giving up that lightly. It relates to Maltese citizens who work in EU institutions.

The argy bargy that went on as to whether Arnold Cassola was entitled to vote or not in the referendum on EU membership was not really resolved in principle. The court had decided the issue as it stood at that point in time (in favour of Dr Cassola voting) on a technicality.

It would be sensible to move forward to establishing a principle, making it clear that anyone working abroad should retain the right to vote, and amend the residence requirement accordingly.

It is much less easy to decide on the other main facet of this particular issue - whether Maltese who have migrated to other EU countries should vote in our general elections. There are Union members who do provide for that. That may be taken as a guideline, but is by no means a rule written in stone.

If one is working, and residing abroad temporarily, one has and usually displays a direct interest in what happens in one's country, in how it is governed, and by whom. Such interest is embedded.

If one has pulled up roots and migrated, though interest in the mother island would prevail, it would be quite less direct, and could decline and wane over time.

People are expected to vote with their heads, having taken as much interest as could be in what the parties and candidates competing for their favour propose to do should they be elected.

One could argue that a Maltese detached from but keeping from afar an interest in what goes on in Malta may be better able to form a balanced opinion than those of us who are ruled by partisanship. Or are swayed or numbed by the local spin and din.

That argument has merits at the margin, but is not easy to accept as being overriding. Readings and guesswork on how the majority of Maltese migrants are likely to vote will enter the equations of the political parties.

From a non-partisan standpoint those of us who live here are entitled to wonder whether we should decide who governs us, rather than taking on the possibility that the outcome will be determined by the margin of our migrant folk who mail or otherwise indicate their voting preferences.

Part of the coming discussions will relate to whether a threshold should be introduced, to allow whoever casts one's vote for small parties, essentially Alternattiva Demokratika, to stand a chance of being truly franchised. At the moment those who vote for AD or other candidates not part of the PN-MLP tandem, and who do not go on to transfer their preferences, are effectively disenfranchised.

To be elected under the present system, a candidate has to get one- sixth plus one of the valid votes cast in a constituency. The Single Transferable Vote system is supposed to make that easier than, say, first-past-the-post alternatives. Experience has shown that a constituency with specific local interest can reject the big parties in favour of small ones.

Gozo proved that in 1947.

If small parties combine so that those who vote for them pass on their preferences to the 'combine' they can also 'beat the big parties'. That was infamously demonstrated in 1962 when the parties shepherded under the Curia's 'umbrella' took seats not only off the MLP, whose supporters faced mortal sin, but also the Nationalist Party, which felt no qualms to exploit the 'sin' factor to its own advantage.

Time has moved on. Today Alternattiva Demokratika stands no chance of electing a candidate with votes from a single constituency. But it might conceivably garner a quota or more on a national basis. A national threshold would theoretically at least increase its appeal, and so its chances of winning representation.

One would think that the time has come for a suitable national threshold to be set within a new system. The main parties will not rush into agreeing over that. They will emphasise the factor of governability. That is real enough.

It would be a worrying situation if the two main parties were tied, and to form a government one of them would have to form a coalition, or reach a voting agreement, with a candidate who vaulted over the threshold. That is best said now, when the consideration very clearly cannot be pegged to any particular person.

It was less than a glorious situation, though there was nothing untoward about it, when the late Toni Pellegrini projected himself and his splinter Christian Workers' Party as potentially holding 'the key' to who governed in the ugly Sixties.

One might argue that, without the threshold, and with only two parties represented in Parliament, when the government has a majority of one, any single MP on the government benches could hold his side to ransom, or at the very least block a particular measure the government wanted to get through Parliament.

In has happened. There are no guarantees that it will never happen again. That point will not be lost on AD. It will still not make governability considerations go away, relating them to the size of the threshold whose arrival, I should think, is inevitable.

If/once the threshold is introduced, after getting over the hurdles of whether it should be based on first preferences (in consonance with the expected MLP model on proportionality) or the final total including transferred preferences (still possibly the PN model) the main parties may be expected to flog the governability factor to near death. Ironically, the smaller parties may get the threshold, but face a harsher direct offensive.

AD are being given enough training by anxious PN gurus in that latter regard.

The overall issue of electoral reform will be decided by the political parties, who will be positioning to try to gain maximum advantage from the reforms, and to minimise any resulting disadvantage to them.

The main stakeholder in the overall issue, though, is the electorate as a whole, irrespective of who it votes for. We must have the best possible correlation between votes received and seats won.

Continuing failure to achieve that might satisfy some aspect or other of partisan interest.

It would continue to act against the interest of the Maltese people as a whole, leaving unnecessary scope for heated conflict over boundaries, gerrymandering and unequal vote-cost of seats.

The basic need is to ensure that not only does each of us have one vote. But that each vote carries the same value. In whichever nook and cranny of Malta it may be cast.