Politics is a team game. One cannot walk alone. To play the political game with any measure of success, it is important for all to play as a team and it is incumbent on any leader to make sure that his/her team is playing well. There are times when one is not happy in the role one is assigned to play, but the proof of the pudding is walking the walk even if one does not like it so much in a particular wing position.

This week’s vote of confidence in Parliament has come and gone. Labour’s gamble to unseat the government has failed. The Hon. Franco Debono has finally decided to abstain in Labour’s no confidence vote, which leaves the government free to continue its work for now. This depends of course on the evanescent mood of its rather seemingly egotistical, self-seeking, rebel without a cause MP, who does not seem to me to have much empathy for others or interest in the common good for that matter. He seems to relish the art of brinkmanship not realising that few of us trying to cope with our daily lives have any real wish to stomach his fun and games at this particular moment in time. One hopes that he does not eventually destroy everything that others and he himself have worked for with much sacrifice. He would have been better served had he followed the mandate given him by his electors to see that the PN’s majority and programme in Parliament was maintained. However, what happens from now on very much depends on him and history will judge him as he behaves henceforth.

I have already taken space in your paper to explain that the toppling of a single seat majority in our Parliament (close to twice in 14 years) is a very tangible reality because of the narrow difference in support between the parties represented in Parliament. This may happen again in the future. I have already suggested that having an 11 district electoral system with each district electing seven MP’s would go a long way to minimising this possibility. If the total number of MPs elected were to be 77 instead of the current 65, which I think is necessary to cope with the increased amount of parliamentary work, this would mean that each MP would represent a smaller number of constituents. Therefore, unless the result would be very close, the seat difference in any election for a seven to 12 thousand vote majority for any one party would more likely be in the magnitude of three or five seats. This would mean that no Member of Parliament would have such disproportional power in his/her hand and hold a whole party and country to ransom.

This system would have other overriding advantages. For one, the possibility of gerrymandering districts by the political parties in order to try to gain an electoral advantage over their opponents would recede even further. Since our present single-transferable vote system requires that a proportion of votes must be wasted in every district when working out the quota, it is possible to manipulate districts to make sure that most wasted votes belong to the opposing party notwithstanding constitutional safeguards in place. This has notoriously happened often in the past.

Today, with a quota worked out by dividing the total number of votes on the district by six (one more than the number to be elected in every electoral district), the total number of votes wasted in each district is roughly 1/6 (300,000/13 = 23076/6 = 3846 votes wasted). If the number of MPs elected from larger districts were to be seven, then the quota would be worked by dividing the number of votes in each district by eight, which means that only 1/8 of the district votes are wasted which are smaller in number (300,000/11 = 27273/8 = 3409 votes wasted). Therefore the possibility of gerrymandering recedes not only because of the smaller number of wasted votes, but also because bigger districts in themselves are more difficult to gerrymander given constitutional restraints. One can also work out a system with 9 districts electing 81 MPs (300,000/9 = 33333/10 = 3333 votes wasted), but then some might think of this as too high a number of MPs for the country to sustain, although I do not myself think so. The problem with the present set up is that the number of districts is too high. Reducing the number of electoral districts goes a long way to solving many problems. Lower district quotas would also mean that social minorities and smaller parties can numerically and theoretically be better represented in Parliament. Of course one should always offset this latter argument with the issue of governability.

There are of course disadvantages. The biggest I can see is that it would not be able for Gozo for example, to remain as a single district, but then again it would still be able to elect its own four or five MPs from a district of seven! This would be one reason for going for the 11-district system rather than the nine district one. I strongly believe that the current system electing governments with such weak majorities needs to be altered into a system leading to stronger governability and that this may be achieved by retaining our single transferable vote system with the changes I have suggested. Of course there may be others.