Stephen Cachia, AD secretary general (TMID 22 December), works out his arguments in favour of giving AD the sixth (observer) seat in the European Parliament by applying a quota that assumed that the election was for five seats! This is a contradiction in terms.

For mathematical correctness, if six seats were to be elected, the quota would have been 35,104 and not 40,954 as it actually was. Therefore, the last counts would have been very different from those of the actual 12 June election.

Both Simon Busuttil and David Casa would each have needed 5,850 fewer votes to be declared elected. That is an extra 11,700 votes for PN candidates, the vast bulk of which would have been eventually transferred to Joanna Drake.

Mr Cachia also makes the fundamental mathematical mistake of quoting just the very last count, when Ms Drake had already been eliminated. In fact, Arnold Cassola’s last count includes 1,357 votes that were transferred to Dr Cassola on Dr Drake’s elimination! But this would not have been so, had the quota been 35,104.

With a quota of 35,104, after the election of the five candidates who were actually elected, the last two unelected candidates would very probably have been Arnold Cassola and Joanna Drake, with the latter being declared elected because of her having more vote– nobody can be exact in these workings. As every seasoned observer of our system knows, there is also an element of luck depending on which votes are top of the pile to be counted and apportioned.

Were the Maltese Parliament to be invited to nominate an observer in the European Parliament, who is to be so nominated? In this scenario, the Electoral Commission would not be able to recount the 12 June votes with a new quota. This would be illegal and would prejudice the rights of all other candidates if any one of the five Maltese MEP vacates his seat, for whatever reason, during this EP legislature that lasts till June 2009.

Parliament would have to look at the first count where the mathematics clearly indicates a third PN observer with the PN having 5,000 more votes than AD, apart from two quotas. Incidentally the first count vote is the electorate’s actual vote, even according to our electoral law.

Regarding Mr Cachia’s comments about my and the PN’s struggle for electoral fairness and the alleged “disenfranchising nine per cent of the electorate”, may I remind AD’s secretary general that to represent one sixth of the electorate one must obtain a number of votes that are somewhere near 16.7 per cent of the total vote. In our system, a candidate must have at least 14.29 per cent (one seventh) of total votes cast to get a seat. AD’s nine per cent is nowhere near that.

This is also borne out by the fact that even the last count votes misguidedly quoted by Mr Cachia show that the PN’s 93,647 votes are more than three times AD’s 29,013. Yet, using the wrong figures, AD expects their vote to be equal to 46,823 PN votes. Mr. Cachia’s claim means that one vote for AD should be considered equal to 1.61 PN votes! Some would call this preposterous. If this exercise is worked out on the first count votes, as it should be, the result would put AD in an even worse

position.

For the record, may I point out that I emailed my previous letter on 14 December, before other contributions on the same subject appeared in The Malta Independent.

Michael Falzon

Naxxar