Bounders, boundaries and hankypankying

Never a dull moment. The political class is off to a brand new controversy over an ancient issue. The Electoral Commission could not agree on proposals to redraw the boundaries of the 13 electoral districts in Malta and Gozo.

The eight members nominated by the parties, split right down the middle - according to their political alignment. The chairman of the commission, a public officer, had the unenviable task of casting his decisive vote.

Decisive, that is, in the first round. The House of Representative still has to debate the Electoral Commission's report. It can send it back for it to review it, as it no doubt will. Once the commission completes its review, its decision will become final.

The early heat expressed by the Nationalist Party over the report is, more than anything else, the beginning of piling up pressure to come to bear should the revision be carried out in a context of continuing political division.

The projection at the moment is that the boundaries are unacceptable to the Nationalists, and - implicitly - that the chairman of the Electoral Commission is a bounder. On the other hand, senior PN executives have recalled to the media, and thereby to their supporters, that the parties are carrying out discussions on electoral reform.

It is sensible that the political class should remind itself of that, even if a basic parallel strategy is clearly in play. That is to try to shove the chairman of the commission off his conclusion, should other things remain equal, while seeking agreement on reform with intensified earnestness.

The question is: whether other things ought to remain equal, should the existing electoral system remain in place. If they do, the country shall trek towards another general election, in 2008, sitting on further unnecessarily division.

Whatever the outcome of that election, one or other of the parties - perhaps both - will allege that hanky panky had been at play.

The current electoral system does not ensure a close matching of a party's electoral share of the valid votes, and the number of seats it gains in the House. It is most unfair to the minnows among the parties. It is also inequitable in respect of the two major parties. At the root of controversial injustice lies the inherent wasting of one sixth of the valid votes cast.

That wastage, as well as the implications to majority rule of any possibility to gerrymandering - call it hankypankying - has been addressed. In an act of sanity the House of Representatives amended the Constitution to ensure that a party that gained at least 50 per cent, plus one, of the valid votes, would form a government. That still left the possibility of an unfair mismatch between votes and seats.

There remained also the little matter of the shifting population. Migration from one place to another impacts on the number of votes in an electoral district. That could trigger the mechanism of review in-built in the electoral system, which demands that electoral districts should not vary by five per cent either way from the average.

That was the triggered mechanism which the current Electoral Commission had to handle, gingerly. Gozo was the most evident aspect of it. Marauders once carried off the whole population of our sister island. Only a few who could buy their freedom escaped that fate. In recent years the money factor has been working in reverse, as Maltese individuals found it advantageous to register their residence in Gozo.

That and other shifts forced the commission to carry out a mathematical cutting-and-pasting exercise. Snip off Ghajnsielem from the Gozo and add it to the redrawn electoral district that will include Mellieha; snip off Safi and add it to Qormi; and such like.

As in past exercises, viewed objectively rather than through the eyes of any charge-and-counter-charge of hanky-pankying, the result was, in various aspects, bizarre. The two examples I have just given are indicative.

When I entered the political fray and muddled through my first electoral campaign (in 1962) Dingli had become part of the electoral district that contained Qormi, my home town and base. The contiguity, or physical touching, that is a requirement of district composition, was via Siggiewi. Yet, Qormi-Siggiewi-Zebbug-Dingli was hardly as sensible as the Qormi-Hamrun-Luqa of earlier days.

Though not exactly a village bumpkin, I had never been to Dingli before that campaign started. (I still did well, though. No Dingli Labourite ignored me on the ballot - I got all the sixth preferences going, as those voters started from the top, Notary Guzè Abela, down to this fledgling, the last one on the alphabetical list.)

After I retired from politics in 1998, charming Kirkop was included with Qormi, going well beyond the usual track of those of us who hail from the latter town. Now the commission proposes to extend the track further, to Safi. Which seems odd, yet not as odd as amputating part of Gozo.

What, though, was the Commission to do? However it went about its task, whatever the horse-trading among its members as they sought a reasonably common basis, and despite all the good intent in the political world, oddities were bound to result.

That inherent probability lies at the heart of the system. The only way to remove it is to recognise that boundaries should be made irrelevant. The 1987 constitutional amendment to guarantee majority rule, reduced their relevance.

The outcome of statistical quirks, or determined hankypankying, might still result in incoherent parcelling of electoral districts. Nevertheless, the result would not deny the right to govern to a party that gained an absolute majority of the valid votes cast in a general election.

It is time to move forward along that path. It can be done. The political class proclaims it is willing to do it. The question remains - how? Various proposals have been made, before, through and after the November 1994 Gonzi report on the electoral system. Last Sunday this newspaper a came up with its own editorial proposal, to reduce the number of seats, from 65 to 61, reduce the districts to nine, and let Gozo elect five MPs and the other constituencies eight each.

My preference, too, is to include a reduction of seats within the required reform, in line with my conviction that there are too many MPs, relative to the population and size of the Maltese Islands (as well as another wasteful excess, of ministers and parliamentary secretaries).

If constituencies are retained, I would go for 11 constituencies (instead of the present 13) - Gozo, and ten in Malta, each returning five members, thereby reducing to 55 the number of MPs to be elected from 2008 on. I had been in favour of reductions when I was in the scramble for seats, so I am not proposing potential bitterness unto others that I would not have tried out myself.

But, in a fundamental reform based on the strictest possible proportionality, the constituency system would need to go, or be diluted. The most radical approach would be to turn the Maltese Islands into one constituency (the number of seats would make no statistical difference, though I'd continue to prefer a reduction). There would be no boundaries and, consequently, no one to dub as a bounder, nor any opportunity for hankypankying.

There would be dismay among sitting MPs who will be seeking re-election, and among other candidates. They may feel that they no longer have clearly defined fiefdoms. That would not be the case. One would still launch one's campaign from a personally selected base.

This approach is already part of our broader electoral system. The islands become a single electoral district in the election of Members of the European Parliament. There was no dearth of eager candidates last year.

Though the great majority of them did not have previous experience as direct competitors for votes, the personal campaigns were generally smooth. The five MEPs, including the four who had never been candidates, and the close runners-up, would be justified in feeling they set a good benchmark of widespread support in virgin territory as regards local electioneering.

Whatever the reform it embodies, there needs to be a new system in place that guarantees as much proportionality between valid votes gained, and seats won as can be achieved. That is the only sensible way forward. Angry talk about the report of the Electoral Commission leads in the same direction as smugness with it - nowhere.

If the existing system remains in place, and the members of the Electoral Commission divide along party lines, whoever happens to be chairman will come under fire, even if s/he were capable of the judgment of Solomon.

If any party, or any element within a party, scuppers, for partisan consideration, a possible radical leap forward into embedded fairness that element would not be really serving party or country.

The oddities and the political heat generated by the proposed redrawing of constituency boundaries are useful. They are a fresh opportunity to demonstrate once again the threat that lies in continuing to shy away from radical electoral reform.

Let the oddities glare the electorate in the face, to make it clearer that reform is essential. Keep the political heat down while the political parties bend over backwards to hammer out an agreement. And get a definite result out that torpedoes the remaining relevance of electoral boundaries.

While at it, the two main political parties should show that they have found respect for a basic tenet of democracy - respect for the rights of minorities. The proportional system and single transferable vote do not, in the normal Malta context, give a chance to voters who move away from the mainstream to vote for a small party.

Governability has to be borne in mind, and it would be much less than ideal to have a government that depended on a coalition, or a voting arrangement, with one or two MPs returned by minorities. That is why a threshold is required. For democratic intent to be real, though the threshold has to be realistic and fair.

It is being rumoured that the Malta Labour Party may be coming round to consider a threshold of five per cent, but that the Nationalist Party wants it to be higher, claiming apprehension about a potential advance by the far right.

It would be terrible for democracy if anyone who really subscribes to theories of hate and disregard to human dignity becomes an MP. But if anyone does, it would be because enough voters with undemocratic sentiments have been persuaded to vote for him/her through the democratic process.

Those who abhor, as most of us must do, such philosophies, wherever they lie on the intellectual and political spectrum, have to try to persuade those who do not. That is how democracy works, and not by banning debate or by negating the right to representation.

Otherwise the political parties would be hankypankying with minorities, while trying to hide behind solemn, but hypocritical, declarations of principle.