ADPD – The Green Party’s  Executive Committee decided to take legal action before the Constitutional Court to ask it to declare that the corrective mechanisms on proportionality and the gender top-up in the electoral law are discriminatory as they effectively only apply in favour of PN and PL.

It is unacceptable that the law is not equal for everyone: this is supposed to be a basic democratic principle underpinning all legislation, ADPD said in a statement.

ADPD Chairperson Carmel Cacopardo said: 'Last week, Parliament, with the unanimous agreement of the PL Government and the PN Opposition, agreed to amendments to the constitution to introduce a constitutional mechanism to address the lack of gender balance in Parliament. However, this law only applies in a situation where Parliament is composed of two political parties. This is another discriminatory mechanism in addition to the proportionality mechanism already in place, which also applies only to PL and PN. We will challenge these two anti-democratic and discriminatory mechanisms in the courts.

During the public consultation on the latest reform that led to the gender top-up mechanism, ADPD said that while agreeing in principle on the need to introduce a corrective electoral mechanism to restore the gender balance in parliament, the party also insisted the law should be applicable to everyone and should not discriminate between women and parties. This, also means that the corrective mechanism on proportionality in the electoral result, which is also restricted in its application to a Parliament composed of only two political parties, needs to be addressed.

Carmel Cacopardo said: "The Technical Committee for Strengthening Democracy, appointed by the Government to draw up the proposals, which committee also coordinated the public consultation, did not even bother to talk to us about the proposals we made, given that we were the only ones to voice an opinion different to what was being proposed.

"The electoral system we have to face in every general election is not fair to us because it discriminates against us and makes it increasingly difficult to achieve the purpose of all political parties, that is to gain parliamentary representation to be in a better position to advance its ideas and ideals. Laws specifically designed to favour the PLPN cabal means that these are purposely and unashamedly continually strengthening the dominance of these two parties by trying to eliminate the rest from the political scene with discriminatory measures, such as these constitutional amendments, under the guise of better representation of different genders. This tailor made fiddling with the electoral law is compounding the discrimination we suffer, together with that already suffered because of the discriminatory proportionality provisions devised by PLPN. This is the last straw , and we have therefore resolved that the party initiates legal proceedings to address the discrimination that Parliament has decided to introduce in the electoral system."