What a breath of fresh air there was last weekend when the Leader of the Opposition announced that Labour’s parliamentary group had agreed to vote for parliamentary approval of the treaty regarding the new EU Constitution!

While the final decision will be taken at the Party’s general conference, and residual opposing views will remain in those factions that continue to oppose EU membership as a matter of principle, one ought to feel comfortable that the general conference will endorse the position of the parliamentary group with a significant majority.

At least, Labour can now present itself to the electorate as a realistic alternative for government and will not continue to scare off the many who think that while the PN has overstayed its tenure of government, are unwilling to elect Labour if that means re-opening the EU issue.

Even on the principle of the matter, the fact that the new Constitution makes specific provisions for exiting membership (something that is probably possible even in the current legal structure even though it is silent about it) is crucial proof that the new EU Constitution does not create conflicts with our own Constitution and sovereignty. If a government is ever democratically elected on a non-membership ticket, the exit route is now more clear and evident even though its actual implementation could present complications.

Now that Labour’s parliamentary group has endorsed consensus on the issue, any calls for the matter to be decided by a referendum seem misplaced. Such referendum could have been appropriate in case of a substantial parliamentary division on the matter, but is clearly inappropriate and a waste of time and resources once the elected representatives appear substantially of one mind on the matter.

It is a pity that just as soon as such elusive consensus was found on the EU Constitution, a sharp division has developed within the Electoral Commission over the very relevant democratic issue of district boundary revisions for the general election.

In a strange twist of events, the proposal drafted by the Chief Electoral Commissioner was supported by the four members nominated by the Opposition and was given the thumbs down by the four members nominated by the government who presented their own minority report.

It is democratically unhealthy to have the only person on the Electoral Commissioner who, as Chief, is nominated by the government after consulting with the Opposition, and who was originally appointed in that position with the agreement of both sides, so abrasively criticised by the government for presenting a report, which seems beyond its boundaries of pleasure.

The government was quick to endorse the minority report presented by its nominees on the Commission. These are broadly the same people who were responsible for drawing up the boundaries in the last three general elections, which in at least two out of three cases, produced a perverse result with a majority totally unrepresentative of the first count votes as desired by the spirit of the Constitution. Hardly can the minority report authors claim to have any credentials for proposing boundaries that produce results which truly respect first preference votes.

In 1996 we had a Labour majority of nearly 8,000 first preference votes returned with a deficit of three parliamentary seats. Only the supplementary provisions in the Constitution could offer Labour the facility of four supplementary seats to gain a slim one-seat majority, very unrepresentative of the size of its majority, which proved fatally insufficient to execute the economic restructuring that was, and still is, necessary.

In 1998 we had a PN majority of nearly 13,000 first preference votes returned with a five-seat parliamentary majority. So the authors of the minority report feel comfortable with boundaries that translate Labour’s majority of 8,000 votes into a three-seat deficit and the PN’s majority of 13,000 votes into a five-seat majority. A spread of eight parliamentary seats with a mere difference of 5,000 votes is a serious threat to the democratic substance of general elections.

The rapidity with which the government criticised the majority report prepared by the Chief Electoral Commissioner and unreservedly endorsed the minority report suggested by its own nominees can only logically lead to one conclusion. The minority report was in fact prepared at Pieta’ with the benefit of raw data collected at the vote counting stage and is intended to perpetuate the perversity of election results in the hope that if Labour is elected next time round they will again re-experience the parliamentary fragility of 1998.

How, may I ask, can the government expect to reach consensus with the Opposition on such crucial matters as social pact, euro entry and other matters of national importance, if on this ultimate test of real democracy the government continues to play games with the margin of latitude allowed by the Constitution regarding electoral district boundaries.

I am no electoral expert and submit myself to the advice of people who are more proficient in electoral numbers. But I read both the majority and the minority reports and I am quite certain in my mind that the majority report is much more faithful to the spirit of the Constitution than the minority report.

Firstly, the percentage deviation of votes in each district is much tighter in the majority report than in the minority report, and on average it is less than one per cent, while the Constitution allows a maximum margin of five per cent. On the contrary, the minority report boundaries propose deviations which are quite near to the five per cent threshold so it is quite likely that should its proposals be adopted, such boundaries would need to be revised again quite soon if population shifts across towns and villages push the deviations beyond the constitutional limit.

Secondly, the test on the integrity of the boundaries depends a lot on minimising the need to split single localities across two or more different electoral districts. In both cases the minority and majority reports propose that Ghajnsielem and Comino have to migrate to the 12th district. No matter how undesirable this may be, Gozo cannot remain a single district within the present parameters of the Constitution and both reports therefore propose the minimal possible fractionalisation of Gozo’s electorate.

However, whereas the majority report proposes the reunification of Zabbar into one electoral district, the minority reports proposes that a bigger slice of Zabbar migrates to a district different to the one that contains the main Zabbar population. Also, whereas the majority report preserves the integrity of St Vincent de Paul with Luqa that hosts it, the minority report proposes the migration of St Vincent De Paul to Qormi, the 7th district.

What a pity that just when we found consensus where there was none, we have lost it where it should be quite easy and natural to achieve.

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