Last Monday, after ADPD-The Green Party submitted its appeal to the Constitutional Court on the electoral system case, a number of news outlets reported this fact as a news item.
It would be pertinent if we can go beyond that to trace and understand how we have arrived at the present situation.
The issue, primarily, is about two articles of the Constitution, article 52 and article 52A.
Article 52 of the Constitution deals with proportionality between votes obtained in the general election and the manner in which these are translated into Parliamentary seats. The issue was first tackled by Parliament in 1987 in order to solve the Constitutional crisis resulting from the 1981 general election results. 1981 was the first time that the gerrymandering of electoral districts had yielded an anomalous result. A previous attempt at electoral gerrymandering, in 1971, was just five votes short of yielding a similarly bizarre result.
Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing the boundaries of electoral districts that gives one political party an advantage over its rivals. This is done by maximizing the impacts of the votes of a political party and minimizing the impacts of the votes of its opponents, as a result undermining democratic representation.
In the 1981 general election, as a result of extensive gerrymandering of the district electoral boundaries it was ensured that the Labour Party, with a minority of votes could, and eventually managed to, elect a majority of Parliamentary seats. What followed was a Constitutional crisis lasting over five years. The issue, then, was more fundamental than proportionality: it was majority rule.
Consequently, as a direct result of the negotiations between Guido de Marco and Dom Mintoff, Parliament, in its final days before dissolution, in February 1987 concluded an agreement. Through a Constitutional amendment to article 52 it was ensured, that, if a political party obtained an absolute majority of valid votes cast at first count it would be guaranteed a majority of parliamentary seats. This was to be done by having its seats increased such that it would have a majority of one seat over all other parties in Parliament. As a result, the first electoral corrective mechanism was introduced in our Constitution. This was specifically designed to ensure majority rule. It did not address proportionality.
This corrective mechanism was tweaked in 1996. It was then provided that the 1987 agreed corrective mechanism would still be applied if a political party obtained a relative majority of votes instead of an absolute majority. This was however qualified with the condition that this was to be applicable if only two political parties made it to parliament.
In 2007 Parliament agreed to further improve this corrective mechanism. Article 52 of the Constitution was further amended to ensure that proportionality of seats in parliament was guaranteed provided that only two political parties are represented in Parliament. This was subject to the over-riding condition that a party obtaining the absolute majority of votes in a general election would always be assigned its majority parliamentary seat entitlement.
This sequence of events clearly illustrates how we have arrived at the present state of affairs. The parties represented in parliament, the PN and the PL, have continuously acted to ensure that they have a right to proportional representation. Simultaneously ensuring that this is beyond the reach of all other political parties.
It would be pertinent to also underline that over the years, since 1989, when Alternattiva Demokratika-The Green Party was founded, informal discussions held between the political parties to introduce a reasonable threshold were unsuccessful. The proposal was always that if the threshold is reached, proportional parliamentary representation would be guaranteed.
Such a reasonable threshold, if introduced would have ensured fairness applicable to all, not just to the political parties currently in Parliament. Instead of a reasonable threshold we have a blanket exclusion as a result of which only the PLPN benefit from the proportionality corrective mechanism. All other political parties are ignored.
On the other hand, article 52A of the Constitution was introduced in 2021 to address gender imbalance in Parliament. It is, practically, a carbon copy of the proportionality mechanism as it only kicks off if only two political parties are represented in Parliament.
All changes to the Constitution referred to above have been approved by Parliament, generally with a unanimous vote. This signifies that the resulting discrimination is a joint political responsibility of the PLPN in Parliament. It is the continuous obstruction we face as we seek to ensure that every vote counts, not just the PLPN ones.
An architect and civil engineer, the author is a former Chairperson of ADPD-The Green Party in Malta. [email protected] , http://carmelcacopardo.wordpress.com