“PN general secretary Joe Saliba is fudging the truth in his description of the discussions between the three political parties over the last two years on changes to the electoral system,” Stephen Cachia, Deputy Chairperson of AD-the Green Party, said.

“As the person who led the AD delegation during these talks, I must express my strong disappointment at the manner in which Joe Saliba has misrepresented AD’s generous and sincere attempts to achieve agreement and consensus during these talks,” he added.

“It is absolutely not true that AD made only two proposals during the talks. AD made a number of proposals during the course of the different meetings and indicated that it was ready to discuss any proposal which would break the impasse reached in an attempt to achieve electoral reform which would be fair for all. It is also completely untrue that AD in any way formally agreed with the MLP proposal to grant the so-called premju maggoranza to a party which achieved a relative majority of 45 per cent,” continued Mr Cachia.

“AD showed exceptional maturity and responsibility in trying to put forward different proposals throughout the talks in a vain attempt to achieve a much-needed reform of the electoral system. However, during the final stages of the talks it became amply clear that the other parties were more interested in safeguarding their partisan interests than in achieving such long-lasting reform in the national interest. In fact, this attitude was amply proved in the manner in which the PN and MLP agreed in secret and behind AD’s back, to change the electoral law to serve their own interests only. In fact, Joe Saliba’s declarations are trying to hide the fact that the PN has agreed with the MLP to grant strict proportionality between votes and parliamentary seats to themselves only, and to deny it to other political parties. No attempt to fudge the truth will hide the fact that this underhand manoeuvre is a blot on the democratic credentials of the other political parties,” Mr Cachia said.