Give voters a chance

Michael Falzon seems to have plans on behalf of the Malta Labour Party to deliver the death blow to what remains of our electoral system based on the proportional representational system.

He is reported suggesting that if the biggest party were to obtain a vote below 50 per cent of the first preferences then even if more than two parties were to be elected to Parliament, the party with the relative majority would still obtain the absolute majority of seats in Parliament!

Put simply, Dr Falzon would be comfortable to suggest that the MLP would govern with a one seat majority in Parliament over the combined seats of the Nationalist Party and Alternattiva Demokratika simply because the MLP would have obtained, say, 45 per cent of the votes cast.

Why should this be the case? Why should Parliament not be allowed to carry out its institutional function of expressing majorities in terms of political alliances from within the parties as elected freely and democratically to Parliament by the electorate?

After all this is what parliamentary democracy is all about!

Following the 1981 "perverse result", the Constitution was amended to ensure that in a two-party Parliament, the party which obtains an absolute majority of votes but not an absolute majority of seats would be given extra seats to govern with at least one seat majority.

In fact, this mechanism was needed in 1987 and in 1996 to prevent other perverse results.

Another constitutional amendment went a step further allowing the addition of extra seats, again in the case of a two-party Parliament, to ensure a one seat majority to that party obtaining a relative majority but fewer seats in Parliament.

So far so bad.

However, no one had, until Dr Falzon, that is, contemplated that in a Parliament with more than two parties, the party with only a relative majority would benefit a bonus of seats to enjoy a majority over the combined number of seats of the other two or three parties in Parliament.

The dangerous fallacy in the MLP's thinking lies precisely here: the more the parties elected to Parliament, the less the voting share of the party with the relative majority. This notwithstanding, the party with the relative majority would be guaranteed an absolute majority in Parliament over all the other parties which, if added together, would have more seats in Parliament.

In effect, therefore, this would automatically condemn any third or fourth party elected to Parliament to be always in the opposition whatever happens and this by virtue of the Constitution!

It would also eliminate forever the possibility of coalition governments or even governments of national unity in this country should the need ever arise.

Democracy demands that this proposal be withdrawn immediately to give voters a chance to give their elected representatives the full freedom to express majorities according to their wishes. In whichever case, one senses a true feeling of overkill in the MLP thinking since in every election held after Independence our electorate has always returned a two-party Parliament!

It is relevant to point out that if the MLP's thinking were to prevail we would in effect bury the proportional representational system once and for all. In the United Kingdom, where traditionally the electoral system is not proportional, 45 per cent of the vote would ensure a substantial majority in Parliament. Our system should never allow such a result since ours should ensure proportionality between votes and seats.

I strongly appeal that an effort be made to stop the process started in 1987 whereby, to remedy the quirks of the proportional system, we started moving more and more away from proportionality and more and more towards majoritarian systems. The result, of course, is having neither working properly.

However, there may be light at the end of the tunnel.

The proposal to have Gozo a fixed district may be the road to take for all the other districts and not just for Gozo. A smaller number of districts with more MPs elected from each district would go a long way in preventing the original sin of our electoral system: district gerrymandering.

Of course, no gerrymandering could have taken place at the elections for the Euro MPs since all of Malta was one district. Naturally, that is at one extremity.

Let us, therefore, elect our MPs from larger but fewer electoral districts. Let us, in other words, regionalise the rest of Malta, keeping Gozo a distinct region.

That is the answer.