So Parliament has been inaugurated. Our democracy is of the representative kind. The term “representation” seems to entail various things. Two are particularly relevant to the type of democracy we have. Representation seems to entail a delegatory aspect, where one gives someone else a mandate and entrusts to him some power or function.

Is it the case that some groups or classes are becoming mere ballot-fodder?

The latter should act according to this mandate and delegation. Hence, so the official line goes, we the people are supposedly the eventual sovereign and wield ultimate power. Yet, we delegate this power to our representatives in Parliament, and these can legitimately make decisions on our behalf. Regarding members of the party which is elected to office, these are mandated (for a period of five years) to implement a particular manifesto, run the apparatus of the State and deal with problems and situations that occur during their term in office.

This narrative and the concepts and assumptions it imbues have been criticised and questioned by various philosophers and political scientists. In what follows I consider neither this aspect of representative democracy nor any criticism of it.

There is however another aspect to representation. Our democracy is supposedly representative because Parliament allegedly represents – in the sense of standing for or exemplifying – features, characteristics, ideas, ideals and trends which exist in society. Thus a society where most people uphold a conservative approach regarding most issues would, supposedly, have a Parliament that is dominated by a conservative party/coalition, whereas the non-conservative party/ies would be consigned to the Opposition’s benches.

Once again, this narrative raises a plethora of questions, issues and problems with which I cannot deal.

I do, however, deal with one issue related to representation that concerns our particular brand of democracy. I start with an issue that is at times discussed, and proceed to consider another that is generally overlooked.

It is frequently noted that women are under-represented in politics in general and in Parliament in particular. To my mind this complaint is justified.

If women represent more than half the electorate and if they have the same abilities that males have and are accorded the same opportunities, then common sense dictates that more or less half of parliamentarians should be women. The fact that this is not the case indicates that probably equality of opportunity between genders is more formal than real.

In what follows however, it is on another failure of Parliament to represent society that I focus; on the fact that it is not just women who are under-represented in the State’s supreme institution. There is a huge imbalance of representation with regards to the professions of our parliamentarians. Thus, lawyers, medical practitioners and other professionals are over-represented. On the other hand, though more than 22,000 persons, (about 10 per cent of the electorate) are employed in manufacture (Vella, 2010), none of them is present in Parliament. And they are not the only group that is not represented.

Categories that previously used to be represented in Parliament – dockers, manual workers, civil servants and trade-unionists – are no longer so or are heavily un-represented. Nor are people on the dole.

One cannot claim that, in contrast to the over-represented professions, these categories are not elected because they lack “sufficient preparation”. Expertise in medicine, law or architecture does not necessarily extend to politics. Law-degrees include only one credit in political thought. The medical course does not include any. Moreover, if the ‘excluded’ do not have sufficient preparation with regards to leadership whereas the categories that are over-represented do have such preparation, the question arises as to why the former should be trusted to choose the leaders if they cannot be trusted to lead.

Exclusion also seems to be at work with regards to the income from an MP’s profession. Though not every MP earns exorbitant money from his profession or business interests, as far as I know no person who earns a minimum wage or has an income lower than this has been elected to Parliament.

Add to this the fact some families are over-represented in the House of Representatives; that certain surnames in Parliament have been there for two or three generations, and the question arises as to whether it is really the case that every citizen has the same opportunity to make it to our nation’s major institutions. Or, on the contrary, is it the case that some groups or classes are becoming mere ballot-fodder?

Lorenzo Milani, the prophetic Florentine priest, thought that such a situation constitutes a stumbling block to the inclusion in society (and not just to inclusion in the political elite) of those in its lowest echelons, since: “… those who go and formulate new laws are those who are suited fine by the old laws. The only ones who have never lived within the situation that needs to change.” (Letter to a Teacher, 2009, p93). His peasant-students write:

“… we have to get to Parliament. The whites will never pass the laws that the blacks need.”