ADPD-The Green Party chairperson Sandra Gauci is mulling legal action over Malta's gender corrective mechanism which kept her out of parliament despite her securing more votes than several female candidates who are to be appointed to the House of Representatives under the quota system.

In an interview with The Malta Independent on Sunday, Gauci was unflinching in her assessment of a democratic system she says is structurally rigged against anyone who does not carry a Labour or Nationalist party card - and she made clear she has no intention of staying quiet about it.

"I am working on it as Sandra Gauci, chairperson of ADPD, but mainly as Sandra Gauci," she said, meaning that the legal challenge is as personal as it is political.

The figures that underpin her grievance are stark. At the 30 May general election, Gauci contested in two districts, obtaining 455 first count votes on the sixth district and 513 on the 12th. That tally was higher than the vote shares of several other women MPs who contested on behalf of both the Labour Party and Nationalist Party.

Yet because the mechanism, introduced in 2021, explicitly applies only when just two parties are represented in parliament, Gauci's votes do not give her the chance of taking a seat in Parliament.

"The system is definitely structured to go against third parties," Gauci told the newspaper. "We need to change the system, we need to make it more democratic- or at least try to make it more open to third parties by making a threshold of at least 2.5%, so if a party reaches that threshold, they get represented."

The two parties which have the power to legislate that change have chosen not to. "The people who can actually do it, which are Labour and PN, are just cosy with things as they are. If they really want to make our democracy more democratic - which at this point it isn't - they should do this."

It is a criticism she has expressed for years, but one that will carry the weight of a legal filing behind it if Gauci pursues with her plan.

The broader election result was another disappointment for APPD, although it was by and large expected. The party failed once again to win any seats in parliament and, with the party's future at stake, Gauci acknowledged that the outcome demands an honest reflection.

"We need to regroup, think about our future and see what we're going to do," she said, pointing to the fact that the combined votes for ADPD and Momentum - the rival third party - demonstrate genuine interest for an alternative. Together, the two parties obtained 8,696 first count votes, more than two full district quotas, yet Malta's electoral structure requires a party to meet a quota within a single district, an almost insurmountable bar for a fragmented third-party vote.

She was honest about the effect of Momentum running. "To a certain extent, yes, it did impact our result," she said, noting that the split in the third-party vote had cost both organisations dearly. "You cannot stop other people from doing their own thing, so we need to focus on what we did and what we didn't do."

Asked whether the Maltese electorate was simply too risk-averse to back a third party, Gauci replied: "Very conservative, definitely. They prefer sticking to what they know." She added that the reluctance was often reinforced at home - young voters had told her of arguments with parents who actively pressured them against voting for smaller parties, a social conservatism she believes runs deeper than any policy calculation and one that will take years to shift.

On the question of ADPD's messaging, Gauci accepted that presentation may be part of the problem. "The message is clear, maybe it doesn't appeal to everyone. What we are proposing either isn't liked or we are not packaging it well enough," she said, adding that she wants to overhaul the party's social media presence to make to more accessible and less technical. "We need to speak the people's language more and be less technical, otherwise nobody will understand us."

Her own campaign, she argued, pointed that way. Leaning heavily into Instagram and targeting younger voters with a self-deprecating, irreverent tone, her slogan was what caught people's attention. She believed that #GoandSlayTheGauciWay was what boosted her performance and left her satisfied with her own personal result.

She however acknowledged that the days immediately after polling night were turbulent for her. On the evening the results came in, Gauci posted a video strongly suggesting she would step down as chairperson, a statement that triggered a public outpouring of support and a petition gathering thousands of signatures calling for her to be given a parliamentary seat. Within 24 hours she had reversed course. She described the initial statement as a reaction to the media attention rather than the ballot result itself.

"When I came out of the counting hall I felt liberated. I wasn't depressed - I came out happy," she said. What shook her, she explained, was the speed and scale with which her words were picked up and re-framed. "I didn't expect to find my face everywhere I scrolled, on every newspaper that exists. I took a shock - not from the result, but from the way my words were misconstrued."

She remains unapologetic about staying on. Internal changes, she warned, are coming regardless. "There will be changes, because certain faces will leave and new faces are needed - but we already put out a call and we already had a big number of responses."

Gauci was equally direct about the structural disadvantages that make ADPD's tasks harder than the major parties. "The major parties have their own radio stations, their own TV, their own everything, and we have to struggle every time for basically anything," she said.

"Why should I go to court for the corrective mechanism? Why should I go to court again for the way our electoral system works? It's always an uphill struggle." The question, she implied, is not whether she is willing to fight - but whether Malta's institutions are prepared to answer for the rules they have built.

She also confirmed that a long-discussed rebrand of the party that was floating publicly after the 2024 European Parliament election remains on the table, delayed only by the snap general election called before the process could be completed.

"Everything is ready, it will be happening in the near future," she said. A name change, she indicated, would form part of a wider modernisation effort alongside the new faces she expects to bring into the party.

But she would not say what the name is.