The Nationalist Party's proposals for electoral reform included a suggestion that Maltese working in European Union countries should retain the right to vote and that Maltese living in the EU would be able to vote in embassies, PN general secretary Joe Saliba said yesterday.

Speaking on TVM's Bondi+, Mr Saliba said the PN had presented a list of 12 proposals in talks with the MLP over the electoral system. Most of them were rejected.

Others included abrogating the Foreign Interference Act, voting with an electronic ID card rather than a voting document, introducing voting by braille for the blind, enabling the elderly in homes and people in hospital to vote in those places, and introducing electronic counting of votes.

Mr Saliba said the Labour Party and Alternattiva Demokratika had proposed that, in the event of more than two parties obtaining parliamentary seats, the party obtaining the majority of votes should govern.

This was not accepted because the PN wanted to retain the possibility of forming a coalition, he said.

An agreement was finally reached late last year on having Gozo considered as a single region and on stricter proportionality between the number of votes cast nationally and the number of seats obtained.

The details on how the proportionality mechanism will be worked out have still to be announced.