The 60 members of the Labour Party's national executive should be meeting soon to set a date for an extraordinary general conference to discuss a motion to give party members voting rights in the election of the party leader. Under the party's statute, the leader is chosen by delegates.
A petition on the issue signed by 122 delegates - more than the 10 per cent of delegates required to force a conference - was presented to party president Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi by Labour MP Marlene Pullicino at the MLP headquarters yesterday.
The national executive, which Dr Zrinzo Azzopardi said would be meeting in the coming days, now has to decide when to hold the conference. He said that although the statute did not establish a period within which the conference has to be called, there would be no procrastination.
Dr Pullicino was hopeful that the executive would call the conference before the leadership election scheduled for June 5, saying that "if regulations are not changed now after all these losses, when will they be changed?"
The signatures started being collected after leadership contender George Abela had proposed on a television programme that all members and not just delegates should vote in the election for party leader.
The proposal had been publicly shunned by party general secretary Jason Micallef but some delegates who agreed with Dr Abela's proposal had taken the initiative to start collecting delegates' signatures.
Dr Pullicino said that logistical problems could be overcome for "where there is a will there is a way". Local committees regularly held elections and a similar system could be adopted, she said.
The delegates say in the petition that this wider method of choosing the leader would give the Maltese and Gozitan electorate a concrete sign that the Labour Party had embarked on the road to renewal with more direct participation in the decision making process. Such a change would again place the Labour Party at the forefront when it came to participative democracy in the country.
The petition calls for the conference to be convened in adequate time for the amendment to the statute, if approved, to be implemented in the election.
Dr Zrinzo Azzopardi said that should the motion be approved, it would bring about a logistical challenge for the party since the number of voters would be going up from 920 to 19,000 - the number of the party's paid-up members by last June.
Dr Pullicino said that she had moved the petition because she felt that she had to give a voice to those who were in favour of a wider choice but she promised her loyalty to whoever is elected leader of the Labour Party.