Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1078260
3 NEWS maltatoday | SUNDAY • 3 FEBRUARY 2019 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 The system will, however, not function in the case of a parlia- ment with more than two par- ties, a source who has seen an outline of the plan told Malta- Today. Another problem is the fact that parliament's size is, so far, physically limited to 77 seats. The government will have to decide how to elect the neces- sary number of women – or men, should this dominant gender ever be underrepre- sented in the Maltese parlia- ment – from the party lists. "It is likely that they will look at the women candidates with the highest number of votes af- ter the last elected MP on each district, and then select the ones with the highest number of votes. That, in itself, already puts an onus on each political party to field a considerable number of women so that, once the quota system is triggered, there will be a good selection of women to enter the House," the source told MaltaToday. Malta elects five MPs from each of its 13 electoral districts, 65 in total, but the number is then adjusted – always in- creased, never decreased – so that the seats in the House re- flect the number of first-pref- erence votes obtained by both parties in the House. The con- stitutional mechanism is only valid in an election of two par- ties. The current parliament is composed of 67 MPs elected from two parties, although the Nationalist Party hosted the Democratic Party on its elec- toral ticket, which elected two MPs, one of which by casual election. The persistent gender imbal- ance in political participation remains a recurrent issue in Maltese politics, often felt to be dominated by a political class of men from the legal profes- sion. The Maltese Parliament is composed of 57 men and only 10 women – that is not much progress since 2005 when 9% of the members of parliament were women, compared to 14.9% today. Labour has four female MPs, while the PN-PD tandem has six. In 2017, the Labour party launched an initiative, LEAD, to mentor women with the aim to increase its female candi- dates to 50% in the 2027 gen- eral election. The quotas system will likely stoke much debate as to wheth- er Malta's proportional repre- sentation system should have this mechanism introduced. Supporters of the proposal in- clude University of Malta pro- rector Carmen Sammut and Equality Commissioner Renée Laiviera, but Labour MEP Marlene Mizzi has previously declared she did not agree with quotas. "You have to start from changing our culture – but we must also refrain from put- ting a psychological hurdle on ourselves which says we won't make it because we are wom- en," she had said. Likewise, Nationalist MEP Roberta Metsola has previous- ly spoken out against a quota system, saying that while she would like to see female par- ticipation rates going up, she didn't want a woman elected to a post merely based on her gender. "We need to have a pro- gramme ensuring as many women are candidates for a po- sition as men. We need strat- egies, but let us not fall into a situation where a woman has to justify why she was chosen." Independent MP and Partit Demokratiku leader Marlene Farrugia came out strongly against the proposal – warn- ing that gender quotas amount to positive discrimination and will deal a blow to the cred- ibility that women have earned over the years. Prime Minister Joseph Mus- cat had told Labour's women's branch that gender quotas will only be a temporary measure "to see more women elected to Parliament and eventually they will no longer be needed." mvella@mediatoday.com.mt Quota proposal will only function in bipartisan setting A good deal of imbalance right here...