The result of the 2008 election once again exposed how fragile our electoral system is, and that much more needs to be done to find a lasting solution that would guarantee a fair result and eliminate all the possible risks that perverse results could bring about.

A month ago, the Nationalist Party was elected to government with a relative majority of votes, and this in spite of obtaining fewer seats in Parliament. The amendments to the electoral law enacted during the past legislature made sure that the party obtaining the highest number of votes would govern the country.

But the situation would have been completely overturned if a third party had been elected to parliament. If Alternattiva Demokratika or Azzjoni Nazzjonali had elected an MP, it would have been the Labour Party which would have won the election in spite of obtaining fewer votes than the PN.

This is the reason why Dr Lawrence Gonzi was only sworn in as Prime Minister after the counting of votes had been completed, results which confirmed that only two parties will be represented in Parliament. Although the possibility of AD or AN electing a candidate was remote right from the start, the Electoral Commission wanted the vote-counting process to end before it could present the final results to the President, simply because no party had obtained an absolute majority of first count votes.

We have come a long way since the 1981 election result. That time, the MLP had obtained a minority of votes but remained in government because it had obtained a larger number of seats in Parliament. Before the 1987 election, amendments were made to ensure that the party obtaining a majority of votes takes over the country’s administration, and this through extra seats being given to that party to give it a majority in Parliament.

It happened twice that this amendment was needed to give the PN (1987) and the MLP (1996) the possibility to govern. In the last legislature, we moved up another step in ensuring that even a relative majority of votes would allow a party to government, but this only if two parties elected representatives.

Now we need to look further ahead, and even Dr Gonzi made it a point to mention the issue during the mass meeting held to celebrate the Nationalist Party’s victory on the Granaries in Floriana.

The way our electoral system works, with the division of the country in 13 distinct districts, is far from being perfect, and we saw the results last month. The fact that districts have to be, in terms of number of voters, similar in size – now with the exception of Gozo which, following the last amendments, will remain as one electoral district irrespective of the number of voters it has – opens the way for the possibility of having a party elect more deputies than the party that obtains the overall majority of votes, absolute or relative.

So many votes go to waste because of this, and the matter has always been at the heart of the smaller parties, who have always insisted that as the situation is at present, the chances of them electing a representative is limited.

Now that this election is over – and that we were lucky to have had a perverse result that could be corrected through the constitutional amendments – the parties should sit down together to try to come up with a better solution for the next round of elections.

The next time round a situation that could throw the country into a political crisis could crop up, and this is something that the parties should try hard to avoid by agreeing on a system that covers all possibilities, while at the same time ensuring that the political party that deserves to be elected, is in fact allowed to govern.