Michael Falzon's piece 'Casualties of casual elections' (The Sunday Time, April 20) has provided much food for thought on the singularly odd results often produced by so-called casual elections which have often had the effect of turning the concept of representative democracy on its head.
In 2003, I was one of the candidates who contested the general election in the eighth district on the PN ticket.
I garnered a total of 348 first count votes and a total of 841 votes being the proportion of second preferences I inherited from former PN leader Eddie Fenech Adami (who polled 11,537 first preference votes), bringing my total on the second count to 1,189 votes.
In this particular electoral district where the PN elected three candidates, namely Dr Fenech Adami, Tonio Borg and Tonio Fenech, Josef Bonnici ended up as runner-up with 2,958 votes on the 14th count while I clinched the second runner-up position with 1,543 votes on the 10th count. The candidates next in line, John Zammit Montebello and Michael Asciak, respectively polled a total of 210 and 165 first-count votes with the proportion of second preference votes inherited from Dr Fenech Adami totalling to 430 and 453.
Dr Asciak survived until the eighth count with 704 votes while Dr Zammit Montebello made it up to the ninth count with 834 votes.
As it turned out, Prof. Bonnici was returned to Parliament a few weeks later following a casual election held in the 11th electoral district after Dr Fenech Adami vacated the seat he had won in that district.
The truth behind Mr Falzon's statement to the effect that casual elections are not aimed at electing the next most popular candidate is vividly illustrated by the peculiar result of the casual election held in the 8th district in March 2004 following Dr Fenech Adami's resignation as PN leader and MP.
Indeed, despite the fact that in the first and second counts of the 2003 general election, my vote tally was more or less equivalent to the combined votes obtained by Dr Zammit Montebello and Dr Asciak in both the first and second counts, and in spite of the fact that my final tally in that election amounted to 1,543 compared with my colleagues' respective final tallies of 834 and 705, it was my friend Dr Asciak who was eventually declared elected, albeit by a mere 40 votes.
The extent to which pot luck - to use Mr Falzon's precise words - came into play in that particular casual election is further illustrated by the fact that only a sample (amounting to 3,618 votes equivalent to the quota) from Dr Fenech Adami's 7,919 vote surplus were utilised in the count.
To compound matters even further, in view of the fact that first-count votes polled by candidates in a general election are totally ignored in casual elections, the votes I obtained on the first count amounting to 348 - which incidentally surpassed those of all my other colleagues on the PN ticket, save for those obtained by Dr Fenech Adami (11,537) and by Dr Tonio Borg (440) - served for no purpose at all.
Is it therefore of any wonder why results of casual elections often fail to reflect electoral trends as expressed in the results of general election?
Mr Falzon is undoubtedly correct in calling for the jettisoning of a casual election system which has many a time served to undermine not only the popular will but also the true significance of representative democracy.