Parliament is set to resume this week after the festive season break.

Two of the first items to be discussed this week will be a report regarding certain changes to some electoral districts presented by the electoral commission, as well as the bill proposing a gender corrective mechanism to increase the number of women MPs.

This was confirmed by the whips from both sides of the House.

The bill proposing a gender corrective mechanism to increase the number of women MPs was introduced by Parliamentary Secretary for Equality and Reforms Rosianne Cutajar on 12 March 2020.

The bill proposes that 40% of Members of Parliament should be made up of people from the under-represented sex. In the eventuality that during an election, the under-represented sex does not achieve 40% of the Members of Parliament elected, the amount of MPs shall increase by no more than 12 members.

The candidates elected through this bill will be apportioned equally between the absolute majority party and the minority parties in parliament. This temporary measure will be in use for the next 20 years unless it is revoked or adopted once again without any amendments.

The other major topic up for discussion is the amendments with regards to the electoral district lines. The electoral Commission’s report, which will be discussed in Parliament, speaks about the changes which are to be made in the electoral district lines.  

According to article 61 subsection 1, the electoral commission has to revise the district lines and this has to be done “with an interval of a minimum of 2 years from the last amendments and a maximum of 5 years. The changes can be made to whatever extent the electoral commission deems fit in accordance to the result of the revised changes.”

The amount of eligible voter in Malta and Gozo is that of 353,241 people. This statistic is according to the electoral registry as of April 2020. Therefore there has to be an equal division of voters within the 13 districts.

Given that Gozo is one complete district and its confines cannot be changed, the amount of Gozitan voters (30,182 people) is deducted from the total amount of eligible voters. The amount then comes to 323,059 voters in 12 districts. When this amount is divided by the number of candidates elected, there will be a median of 26,922 eligible voters for each electoral district.

With this in mind, according to the changes in eligible voters in each locality and household, there has to be changes made in order for the districts to pull the same voting weight. It is impossible for all the districts to have the exact same number of voters therefore the electoral commission once again in accordance to article 61, puts a cap on the maximum and minimum amount of voters eligible in each district. The minimum number of voters is 25,576 while the maximum is that of 28,268 voters.

The amendment to the district lines are therefore made to correct these changes. In total, there are two districts which have gone over the amount of eligible voters. The 7th district has exceeded the amount of maximum voters by 6.75% (1,817 voters) and the 12th district has exceeded the maximum amount by 6.31% (1,699 voters).

In order to correct this, some voters from the 7th district in Zebbug are going to be transferred to the 6th district and voters from the 12th district are being transferred to the 10th district. With these changes, the respective districts will all be within the confines of the minimum and maximum eligible number of voters.