Opposition votes against

The opposition yesterday voted against a constitutional amendment Bill providing that Gozo may not be divided when electoral boundaries are drawn up.

Both sides said they intend to move amendments to the Bill during the committee stage.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and opposition leader Alfred Sant both said however that agreement between the political parties on a system of strict proportionality between the votes cast and the allocation of seats in Parliament would mean a solution not just for the Gozo issue but the wider problem of the drawing up of electoral boundaries.

Dr Gonzi said significant progress had been made on a formula to calculate strict proportionality, and the PN was ready to hold further talks for a final settlement to be reached.

Earlier, Dr Sant said the PN had unilaterally wrapped up party talks but the MLP did not consider the talks as having been concluded.

Yesterday morning's debate was opened by Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg who explained that this Bill was required because the number of eligible voters in Gozo had exceeded the limit imposed by the Constitution - which is plus or minus five per cent of the average quota of all 13 districts.

According to the April 2005 electoral register, the population of Gozo was 25,388 when the electoral quota was 23,564. Gozo therefore exceeded the quota by 7.74 per cent.

As a result, the Electoral Commission had no alternative but to hive off Ghajnsielem - with 2,020 eligible voters - from the 13th district (Gozo) and link it to the 12th, which consists of Mellieha, Naxxar and St Paul's Bay.

This, Dr Borg said, was not the first time that Gozo had faced such a problem, but the issue was the other way around in 1970, when the island's population fell below the district quota even though at the time a divergence of 15 per cent was allowed.

There had been proposals to link Mellieha to the Gozo district, but after protests by the people of Mellieha, the problem was solved by having some districts elect six candidates and others elect five, something which was permissible at the time.

Dr Borg said it was only right that a solution should also be sought for the current situation but none was possible under current rules as all districts had to elect the same number of candidates - five.

The only solution, therefore, was to change the five per cent rule. What was being proposed in the Bill was that the five per cent rule would continue to apply for the districts in Malta, but not for Gozo and Comino, which would remain one district independently of how their number of eligible voters fluctuated. No part of Gozo may be added to the districts in Malta and no localities in Malta may be included in the Gozo district.

Dr Borg said the government intended to move an amendment in the committee stage so that Ghajnsielem would revert to the Gozo district immediately as this Bill was approved and not at the next revision of electoral boundaries.

The minister said he was somewhat surprised by the argument made by Alternattiva Demokratika that the arrangement which this Bill was proposing could mean that a higher quota would be needed to elect an MP in Gozo. Everything came at a price and while the population of Gozo could rise or fall, it was surely better to have MPs elected with an extra 300 votes than to remove the 2,000 Ghajnsielem votes.

This issue did not involve the direct election of the government, since, when only MPs from only two parties were elected, the party winning the majority of first count votes was assured a parliamentary majority.

He said that although talks had been held between the PN and the MLP and although the MLP appeared to be in favour of having Gozo as one whole district, it had also wanted to introduce other changes to the electoral system, such as a system which would have prevented coalitions.

The government's argument was that this was not a bartering market and the MLP was either in favour of the Gozo amendment, or it wasn't.

Dr Borg also spoke on how the Nationalist Party had throughout its history regarded Gozo as being more than an electoral district. It recognised that the island had its own characteristics and challenges and it was always agreed that Gozo should enjoy a level of autonomy. Under the British, Gozo had its own civic council, whereas the PN government appointed a minister for Gozo.

Opposition leader Alfred Sant said the Bill had been packaged such that the government wanted everyone to believe that it wanted to uphold Gozo's regionality. It was claiming that whoever voted against this Bill would be undermining the concept of Gozo's regional integrity. This attitude was unacceptable.

Dr Sant spoke on the MLP's policies for Gozo, pointing out that the 1996 Labour government had been the first to draw up a Gozo development plan.

It also issued a White Paper on the creation of a regional council for Gozo but this initiative was shelved after the change of government.

Dr Sant said that over the past few years the Ministry of Gozo was shorn of many of its areas of responsibility and many decisions were taken in Malta. There was still no law which gave the ministry statutory functions.

Important projects in Gozo had fallen back, including the Mgarr harbour facilities and the Gozo helicopter which had practically disappeared because the government was refusing to subsidise it. Gozo Channel fares had risen, profitability had declined, and so had tourism to Gozo.

He said the MLP was in favour of Gozo being united in one electoral district. The question in this debate, however, was whether Gozo was being used by the government as an excuse to achieve other political aims.

He said the current electoral quota and the five per cent leeway which the Constitution allowed was a fairer system than what had existed before, yet it had still produced perverse results in several general elections, with the parliamentary seats allocated to the political parties not being truly proportional to the votes they had won.

There was no doubt that the best solution would be to reach agreement on a system of strict proportionality. In that way the population size of electoral districts and the way the boundaries were drawn up would no longer be relevant.

Dr Sant tabled the minutes of talks held between the political parties on the electoral system, saying that among the subjects that were discussed was strict proportionality which, it was agreed, should be based on the first preference vote, as well as other issues such as governability and the threshold which parties had to surpass to achieve a presence in Parliament.

Dr Sant said that for the MLP the talks had not ended, but the PN unilaterally and abruptly cut them off, claiming there was no agreement on governability.

Dr Sant said the point raised by AD was a good one. If there was no agreement on strict proportionality and all localities in Gozo were to be grouped in one district, the vote of the Gozitans could count for less as the island's population increased.

The main reason why the number of registered voters in Gozo was growing was evidently that many Maltese having a second residence in Gozo were transferring their registered address there, so as to benefit from lower Gozo ferry fares.

Therefore, did it require a constitutional amendment to solve the problem that had been created? An administrative measure could be taken whereby those who proved that they owned property in Gozo could be eligible for lower fares, without changing the address on their ID card.

If was for this reason that one suspected there was more behind the government's actions.

Dr Sant said the current electoral boundaries were the fairest ever and he was surprised that the PN disagreed with them.

Studies had shown that if either party won a 10,000 vote majority, nationwide, it would be allocated a three-seat majority in the House, which was fair.

The fear was that the transfer of Ghajnsielem from the 12th district back to the 13th could trigger a change in the rest of the district boundaries when this was not required.

The MLP's studies showed that the transfer of Ghajnsielem, on its own, would not require any changes to the boundaries because the population of all the districts would remain within the limits laid down by the Constitution. Neither would this change affect the outcome of the results obtained by the parties.

The opposition would therefore propose an amendment in the committee state to lay down that after Ghajnsielem reverted to the Gozo district, the electoral boundaries would remain unchanged up to and including the next general election. If the government had no other intentions and it was genuine in its view of Gozo as a region, he could not see how it could be against this amendment, Dr Sant said.

The opposition, however, remained against the Bill as moved by the government. It would, however, vote in favour if the Bill was amended.

Dr Gonzi said MPs had a clear choice, to vote in favour or against Gozo remaining a whole for electoral purposes. The way how Ghajnsielem had been hived off the 13th district was a matter of concern for all of Gozo, more so because as the number of eligible voters grew, this problem could spread to other localities.

Dr Gonzi said the PN always put Gozo at the centre of its policies, viewing it as adding value to Malta. That was why a minister had been appointed for the island, and not a parliamentary secretary as Dr Sant had done when he was Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister referred to the party talks on the electoral system and said the PN always insisted that the various issues should be tackled separately. The principle that Gozo should be a whole could not be conditioned by other matters. That would amount to a smokescreen, or blackmail against the Gozitans.

The door remained open for further talks between the parties and he remained open to ideas to guarantee proportionality, but matters should not be mixed.

The Bill was clear and achieved the aim which even the MLP said it agreed with.

Dr Sant had said that his fear was that this change would trigger a re-drawing of the electoral boundaries, yet Dr Sant himself had presented workings, which he could confirm, showing that the transfer of Ghajnsielem from one district to another would not have any impact on results and the population of the other districts would remain within the brackets allowed by the Constitution.

Still, Dr Sant wanted to move an amendment which would effectively freeze all the electoral boundaries up to the next election. That would mean attaching a millstone to the Electoral Commission, preventing it from acting, whatever population changes took place. This sort of constitutional amendment had never been moved before and he was aware of it. It needed to be examined closely because he felt that even the opposition itself was not appreciating its potential implications.

Dr Gonzi said he would very much like to see agreement on strict proportionality, something which Dr Sant had spoken well about. Agreement on this would mean a solution to many of the problems of the electoral system, including Gozo and the electoral boundaries, and it would be an assurance that the people's will as expressed in the ballot box was fully respected.

The Prime Minister said that in his view, substantial progress had been made in the party talks. They had agreed on a formula to calculate strict proportionality using the first preference vote. He also felt agreement had been reached on the threshold. What remained was a complication he had not expected, when Dr Sant proposed that when more than two parties were elected and none achieved an absolute majority, the largest party would be awarded a majority prize, effectively preventing the other parties from forming a governing majority.

Dr Gonzi said he was fundamentally against this. If the people voted in a way which led to a coalition, so be it. One could see the complications which a system of majority prizes had created in another neighbouring country.

His appeal, Dr Gonzi said, was that this debate could have provided a ray of light for the political parties to move forward in their talks. The best result would be agreement on strict proportionality and governability.

If that solution was not possible, the only way how the Gozo issue could be solved was through this Bill, which could possibly be further refined, he said.

The Bill was then given a second reading, the opposition voting against.

Gozo Minister Giovanna Debono, Labour Gozo spokesman Anton Refalo and Nationalist MP Frederick Azzopardi also took part in the debate.