Editorial

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi addressed the uncertainty surrounding the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and the prospect of Malta electing an additional sixth seat to the European Parliament.

In answering a parliamentary question, Dr Gonzi showed a particular sensibility to the complex issues at hand involving the entire 27 members of the EU that, come June, will be electing the members of the European Parliament.

He first stressed the important result obtained through successful negotiations ensuring the much fought for sixth seat for Malta. Should the Irish referendum produce a result in favour of the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, the sixth seat would be available by not later than 2010. However, Dr Gonzi sounded a note of caution. He indicated that the EU would have to face the anomalous situation of adding seats to an already sitting European Parliament through a round of discussions as to how this should be done, leading to an international protocol to be ratified by the member states.

Although Malta stands to win an extra seat, other countries will have their quota of seats reduced. A decision will have to be taken if the European Parliament is to be enlarged to incorporate the additional seats over and above those already elected at the June elections. The reduction of any seats would then take place following the 2014 elections. The track record of the EU in similar circumstances would strongly indicate this scenario to be the most probable one because it would avoid the impractical situation of de-seating MEPS legitimately elected by their electorate.

These considerations provide the key to understand the electoral sense behind the Prime Minister's second part of the answer. Dr Gonzi assured the Maltese electorate that the method to elect the sixth seat would be adopted in a "transparent manner in conformity with the electoral traditions of our country, which are and may be established by Maltese electoral law for the European Parliament".

This tells the electorate what it needs to know for the coming elections. It tells the electorate of the importance to use wisely their vote and, more significantly, the preferences available to them from their vote. This will certainly determine the five candidates to become members of the European Parliament this June. It may well also serve for the election of the sixth seat since "the electoral traditions" of the Maltese electorate and the method of electing MEPs all over Europe have their meeting point in the proportional representation by the single transferable vote.

The announcement by the two major parties that the method of electing the sixth will be made known before the elections of June 6 is most welcome. Now, one awaits further details as to the changes in the law that will be necessary.

The electorate is well advised from now to make use of all the preferences politically available at the coming MEP elections. It is a well known fact that the more candidates to be elected the more preferences are to be utilised for the vote to be most effective.

The electorate would not only be maximising the vote for the election of the five candidates in June but people would place their vote in the "pole position" should the preferences also be used for electing the sixth candidate later on. In so doing the electorate would, in its turn, be showing an equal sense and sensibility as that shown by the Prime Minister.