Alternattiva Demokratika has filed a judicial protest arguing that the Maltese electoral system is 'discriminatory' against it. This has been a sore point for AD since its founding 21 years ago.
The argument being put forward to have the electoral system changed to suit it, however, does not stand the test of fairness. It would also be grossly discriminatory towards individual candidates of other parties.
The test of fairness of an electoral system is the number of votes needed by a candidate to gain a seat. For example, the British first-past-the-post system is obviously a shambles when each Conservative or Labour MP represents an average 35,000 and 33,000 votes respectively, while each Liberal Democrat represents 120,000 votes.
If you are a Conservative or Labour voter, you need 33,000-35,000 like-minded others to return an MP to the House of Commons, but if you are a Liberal-Democrat, you need 120,000!
What about Malta? In a parliament as AD would like the 2008 election to have produced, that is 32 seats each for the PN and MLP and one seat for AD, each PN or MLP MP would represent an average 4,500 and 4,400 voters respectively, while the 'kingmaker' - the sole AD member - just 3,800 voters. This is the basic test of fairness that AD's case fails.
AD presumably disagrees with our present Single Transferable Vote (STV) electoral system. Therefore, let us work out the 2008 general election result with a system that meets AD's objections.
The most widely used method of proportional representation is the D'Hondt system - named after Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt - that allocates seats to parties in the strictest possible proportion.
This system is used in more than 20 countries in Europe and is favoured by small parties who, like AD, argue for stricter proportionality. It had also been proposed by the Gonzi commission in the early 1990s to allocate seats to parties that achieve a national threshold of votes. In its judicial protest, AD seems to agree with the Gonzi commission's proposals.
The D'Hondt method divides a party's vote by the number of seats in an assembly and allocates those seats to the parties according to the fairest average vote per seat.
What would have happened in the 2008 general election? The D'Hondt method in its formality would have divided the PN's 143,468 votes by each number up to 65 (the number of seats in parliament). It does the same with the MLP's 141,888 votes and AD's 3,810 votes. It then allocates seats according to the averages of votes per MP that give the fairest distribution of seats.
To be practical, I am dividing the PN and the MLP vote by 31 to 34 (being the likeliest number of seats each party could get) and AD's vote by one. This gives the following results:
PN: 31seats would each represent 4,628 votes; 32: 4,483; 33: 4,348; 34: 4,220.
MLP: 31 seats would each represent 4,577 votes; 32: 4,434; 33: 4,300; 34: 4,173.
AD: one seat would represent 3,810 votes.
The D'Hondt method would definitely allocate 32 seats each to the PN and the MLP. What about the remaining seat? From the above figures, it follows that it would be allocated to the PN for an average 4,348 - as opposed to the MLP at 4,300 or AD at 3,810. Therefore, even with its apparently preferred system and with no minimum national vote hurdle, AD would still have no seat in the current parliament.
One cannot apply the fairness test only to parties. In assemblies like our House of Representatives, it is not parties that are elected but individual MPs who are not delegates voting according to their party's directives, but representatives voting as they wish - as Dom Mintoff once famously did.
Apart from failing the tests of fairness and of its apparently preferred electoral system, AD's argument grossly fails the test of non-discrimation to individual candidates.
In 2008, the highest scoring AD candidates were Harry Vassallo in the 10th district (with 524 votes on first count and 625 on the last count) and Arnold Cassola in the ninth district (with 457 and 635 votes respectively).
In that election, a lot of the individual candidates of the other parties who were not elected scored much higher than either AD candidate. On the other side of the coin, all elected MPs in our current parliament scored around five times higher than Dr Vassallo and Dr Cassola in the last count, the effective count for candidates in our system.
It would certainly be a gross discrimination to require candidates of big parties to get close to a quota of votes to be elected, while only a fifth of a quota would be needed by the AD candidate.
Rather than filing judicial protests against the Constitution, which sets down our electoral system in detail, AD would be of much better service to the Maltese electorate - and to itself - if it manages to come up with an alternative electoral system that can in some way produce a fair and non-discriminatory seat distribution.
micfal@maltanet.net