For the fourth time since 1981, Malta's so-called proportional representation system has again produced a 'perverse' result, with one party obtaining fewer votes than the other winning a three-seat majority.
In the March 8 general election, the Labour Party, winning just under 48.9 per cent of the votes, elected 34 of its candidates, while the Nationalist Party, with 49.3 per cent, elected 31.
It is only thanks to a 1996 Constitutional amendment that the PN leader, Lawrence Gonzi, is able to form his second government, since his party will now be given four additional seats - filled by the 'runners-up' with the highest number of votes - to give it a one-seat majority in Parliament.
That amendment states that if a party wins a relative majority of first-preference votes, and only two parties manage to win seats, it will be given additional seats to enable it to form a government; in another amendment to the Constitution, enacted last year, the number of additional seats would proportionately reflect the majority of votes it enjoys over the second party.
Yesterday week, the PN managed to surpass Labour by a mere 1,580 votes, so it is only entitled to a one-seat majority. Had the difference been around 7,000 votes - or the equivalent of two quotas - it would have been given enough additional seats to give it a two-seat majority, and so on. However, the amendment would not have been applicable had a third party - such as Alternattiva Demokratika - won a seat, so today we would have had a Labour government enjoying a three-seat majority, despite obtaining fewer votes than the PN, and without needing AD's support to govern.
There must be something fundamentally wrong when our system, which was originally designed to ensure proportionality between votes obtained and seats won, breaks down on four occasions in the past 26 years. And what is fundamentally wrong is that when drawing up the new electoral districts, the Electoral Commission - although in strict conformity with the Constitution - favours one party over the other so that in most districts, votes which do not help to elect an MP belong to one party rather than the other.
It is very tempting to describe this exercise as gerrymandering, which in a sense it is, but I feel that the fault lies more in the strict Constitutional requirements, since districts which favour one party can probably only be redrawn in a way which would favour the other.
It all started with the 1981 election, when in a straight, two-party contest, the PN, with 51 per cent of the popular vote, ended up with 31 seats to the MLP's 34, obviously because gerrymandering had been carried out on such a scale that even with 54 per cent of the vote, the PN would still have ended up with a minority of seats.
It took five years of struggle - including a PN boycott of Parliament which lasted more than a year - to finally persuade the ruling MLP to agree to a Constitutional amendment ensuring a one-seat overall majority to the party obtaining at least 50 per cent plus one of the first preference votes. And even that concession came at a price - the Nationalists had to agree to amendments entrenching Malta's neutrality and non-alignment in the Constitution.
The 1987 result was a carbon copy of 1981: the PN, winning 50.9 per cent of the votes to the MLP's 48.8 per cent, ended up with 31 seats to Labour's 34. On that occasion, the brand-new Constitutional amendment kicked in and the Nationalists had four 'runners-up' declared elected.
Another "perverse" result was that of October 1996, this time at the MLP's expense. The electoral districts - which, according to the Constitution, have to be reviewed not less than two years before and not more than five years after the last revision - tended to favour the PN, which although obtaining only 47.8 per cent of the vote, ended up with 34 seats to the 31 obtained by the MLP, which had received 50.7 per cent. Although the gap between the two parties here was 7,633 votes, the MLP got four additional seats, when five would have been fairer.
We have now just had a repeat of 1981, 1987 and 1996 but with a difference: the PN this time did not obtain an absolute majority of votes. The result, however, makes one question the whole point of revising the districts when this is repeatedly giving such 'perverse' results.
In the 1974 Republican Constitution, Dom Mintoff's Labour government reduced the variation in the size of the voting population between one district and another from plus or minus 15 per cent of the national average, as it was under the 1964 Independence Constitution, to plus or minus five per cent. Also, an odd number of MPs had to be returned from each of the districts, which also had to be an odd number. The number of MPs went up to 65.
Since 1976 we have had 12 electoral districts in Malta and one in Gozo, each electing five MPs. However, demographic changes and shifts in population have necessitated frequent revisions, with the consequences outlined above. This, in my opinion, calls for a radical change in the whole electoral boundary system.
To begin with, the number of MPs - normally 65, but now 69 - is too high. So I propose that Gozo be retained as a separate district electing five MPs, with Malta divided either into six districts electing nine MPs each, or eight districts electing seven each. This would result in a parliament of 59 or 61 MPs.
Electoral constituencies should be made up of whole localities which are contiguous and combine localities with a declining population with others that have a growing population, so that frequent revisions become unnecessary. This would also make it easier for MPs and candidates to cultivate their constituencies. It would also result in fewer 'wasted' votes in each district - 10 or 12.5 per cent of the total compared with 16.6 per cent at present; the result of each district in terms of seats would thus be harder to predict and so does not influence the Electoral Commission to favour one party over another if it deems a revision necessary. Also, each district's voting population should be allowed to vary by 10 per cent from the national average, to make frequent revisions even more unnecessary.