Fewer Lazarus candidates in Parliament

Austin Bencini passionately defends the merits of an untampered STV electoral system to decide the allocation of the possible sixth seat in the forthcoming European Parliament elections (The Lazarus Proposal, Talking Point, January 29).

He claims that allocating this possible sixth seat to the first runner-up from the unelected candidates would be a scandalous and undemocratic resurrection of a Lazarus candidate.

However, for fairness' sake, Dr Bencini could surely have not forgotten that the Maltese Parliament presently has four such Lazarus candidates in its midst: the four Nationalist MPs who were not elected through the STV system but were the four best runner-ups, added to the Nationalist parliamentary group to ensure proportionality between first count votes and parliamentary seats.

Our country seems to find no problem with such blatant tampering with the STV electoral system once the main political parties have repeatedly failed to agree on a truly fair and proportional system for national elections.

Why then should there be a problem with adapting the STV system to solve the sixth seat conundrum should this arise?

Dr Bencini's alternative proposal is an interesting one which bears further discussion. However, it is unfair to rubbish other proposals which put forward very minimal changes to the STV system for the EP elections when we have repeatedly witnessed mammoth tampering with this system for national elections.

It is even more unfair to criticise AD and the Labour Party for their proposals while remaining silent about the convenient and hypocritical silence the PN has adopted about the possible sixth seat allocation for Malta.