In the weeks leading up to and following the 2026 general election, Malta's smaller political parties repeatedly directed their criticism at the country's two major political forces. The argument was familiar: the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party have together maintained a political duopoly that has effectively excluded third parties from parliamentary representation.

There is merit in parts of that criticism. For three decades, successive governments and oppositions have shown little appetite for meaningful electoral reform that would allow smaller parties a realistic path into Parliament.

Yet historical accuracy matters. And when one revisits the debate that took place in the years preceding the 1996 election, it becomes difficult to sustain the argument that both major parties were equally responsible for blocking reforms aimed at helping smaller parties.

The documentary record tells a more nuanced story.

Thirty years ago, following the work of the Electoral System Commission chaired by then Speaker Lawrence Gonzi, Malta came remarkably close to introducing changes that would have significantly improved the prospects of smaller parties obtaining parliamentary representation.

The proposal did not come from Alternattiva Demokratika. It did not come from civil society. It came from a Nationalist government, then led by Eddie Fenech Adami.

And it was opposed by the Labour Party, then led by Alfred Sant.

The issue deserves renewed attention because today's debate often proceeds as though no serious attempt was ever made to address the structural barriers facing smaller parties. That is simply not the case.

The Gonzi Commission was established in 1994 to examine ways of improving proportionality while preserving governability. One of the key problems identified was the possibility of distorted results whenever no party obtained more than 50% of first-count votes. The commission examined numerous alternatives and sought a system that would better translate votes into parliamentary representation.

Within that discussion emerged the concept of a national threshold.

The Nationalist Party's submission proposed a threshold of 5% of valid votes nationwide. Under such a model, a party obtaining at least 5% of the national vote would become entitled to parliamentary representation even if it failed to secure a quota in any individual district.

For a small party operating in Malta's highly polarised political environment, this represented a potentially transformative opportunity.

Indeed, news reports at the time explicitly described the proposal as one that appeared particularly favourable to smaller parties. Journalists covering the reform package noted that it would benefit parties unable to win seats in individual districts but capable of attracting meaningful support nationwide.

The contrast with the existing system was stark.

Under Malta's electoral arrangements, a party could secure a substantial national vote share yet fail to elect a single representative if its support was spread evenly across constituencies. The proposed threshold sought to address precisely that problem.

Alternattiva Demokratika recognised the significance of the proposal. News items at the time noted that AD welcomed the reforms and saw them as providing a realistic route to parliamentary representation through a national threshold.

Labour, however, took a different view.

Initially, Labour's submissions to the Gonzi Commission consisted largely of general principles rather than a specific alternative proposal. The commission's report records that while both the Nationalist Party and Alternattiva Demokratika advanced concrete models, Labour did not put forward a detailed competing system.

As the debate intensified during 1995, Labour's opposition became increasingly pronounced.

The party argued that proportionality should be calculated exclusively on first-count votes. It objected to the way votes from parties failing to reach the threshold could subsequently influence the distribution of seats. Labour maintained that the government's proposal could produce outcomes that departed from pure first-count proportionality.

At the same time, Labour also raised a constitutional objection.

Its position was that the proposed reforms went beyond procedural amendments to electoral law and amounted to changes to the electoral system itself. Therefore, Labour argued, the reforms required constitutional amendment and could not be enacted through ordinary legislation passed by a simple parliamentary majority.

This was not a minor procedural disagreement.

It went to the heart of whether the reforms could realistically become law.

Since constitutional amendments required a two-thirds majority, Labour's refusal to support the package effectively doomed the project.

The result was political deadlock.

The proportionality reforms never materialised.

The 5% threshold never became reality.

And Malta's electoral system remained largely unchanged.

The irony is striking.

Three decades later, many of the same arguments being advanced by smaller parties are arguments that the proposed reforms were specifically designed to address.

The threshold would not have guaranteed parliamentary representation. Nor would it have ended two-party dominance. Five per cent remains a significant hurdle in any democracy and, in fact, no single small party has ever come close to reaching that target.

But it would unquestionably have lowered the barrier to entry.

Instead of requiring support concentrated enough to produce district-level victories, smaller parties would have been able to convert a nationwide vote share into representation.

That is why the debate matters.

Because current political discourse often portrays the historical record as one in which both major parties jointly prevented electoral reform. The evidence suggests something rather different.

The Nationalist government brought forward a proposal containing a 5% threshold.

Alternattiva Demokratika broadly welcomed it.

Labour opposed it.

Whether Labour's constitutional objections were sincere matters of principle or politically convenient arguments remains open to interpretation. Its leaders certainly articulated legal and constitutional concerns. Their supporters argued that the government was attempting to alter fundamental electoral mechanisms without the broad consensus required for constitutional change.

Yet the political consequences were clear regardless of motive.

The reforms failed.

The threshold disappeared.

And the status quo survived.

This does not mean the Nationalist Party deserves a free pass.

Far from it.

An uncomfortable question concerns what happened afterwards.

Once the reform effort collapsed, neither of Malta's major parties returned seriously to the issue.

Labour governed between 1996 and 1998, again from 2013 onwards, and has now spent well over a decade in power. At no point did it introduce comparable proposals aimed at lowering the barriers faced by smaller parties.

The Nationalist Party, meanwhile, spent years in government before 2013 and has spent the last 13 years in Opposition. It too has not revived the 5% threshold proposal or advanced any similarly ambitious reform package.

This is where criticism of both major parties becomes entirely justified.

The historical record may show that Labour blocked the most significant reform attempt of the mid-1990s. But the subsequent decades reveal a broader failure shared by both sides.

Neither party made electoral reform a priority.

Neither party sought to build consensus around mechanisms that could widen representation while preserving stability.

Neither party invested serious political capital in addressing a question that repeatedly resurfaces during every election campaign.

As a result, Malta enters the second half of the 2020s still debating many of the same issues that were being discussed in 1994 and 1995.

Small parties remain outside Parliament.

Voters continue to complain that significant votes produce no representation.

And political fragmentation remains constrained by electoral structures largely unchanged from those that existed 30 years ago.

History therefore offers two lessons.

The first is that current narratives should be more accurate. It is not historically correct to claim that both major parties acted identically during the reform debates of the mid-1990s. The available evidence shows that the Nationalist Party proposed a 5% threshold that would have improved the prospects of smaller parties, while Labour opposed the package and insisted that it could not proceed without constitutional consensus.

The second lesson is that neither party can point to those events as proof of lasting commitment to reform. Whatever positions they adopted 30 years ago, both subsequently allowed the issue to disappear from the national agenda.

That may be the greatest missed opportunity of all.

Three decades later, Malta is still waiting for a serious, comprehensive discussion about how to reconcile governability with broader representation.

The debate has not changed much since 1995.

The political actors have.

The excuses have.

But the unanswered questions remain exactly the same.