Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1464865
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 17 APRIL 2022 OPINION 3 LETTERS & EDITORIAL maltatoday | SUNDAY • 17 APRIL 2022 Mikiel Galea Letters & Clarifications Malta's flawed democracy IT is imminent. They are going to co-opt six une- lected Labour and six unelected PN candidates to parliament. PL got 55% of the votes and PN got 41%. But, who cares about proportionality? They still get six and six to ensure they have a stronger hold on parliament. This is the biggest travesty of de- mocracy. A non-PLPN woman, Sandra Gauci, got more votes than one Labour wom- an who is being co-opted. Sandra Gau- ci placed better than Labour's Davina Sammut Hili, but is being kicked out to be replaced by number 13 Labourite, thanks to the perverse mechanism that they created. And then a PN candidate, Janice Chetcuti, makes a whole mockery of the supposed corrective mechanism and plays with the system in order to ensure that her PN male colleague gets elected... at the expense of a woman. Is the will of the electors being re- spected? Is this right? Is this democra- cy? What about ADPD and third-party candidates, like me, who got propor- tionally more votes than some of these co-opted candidates? Why do all pro- portionality mechanisms introduced by the PL and PN always ignore the will of non-PL and non-PN voters? If introduced, truly democratic pro- portionality mechanisms should de- fend the rights of all voters. The crux of the issue is that it is not true that the law is giving women rep- resentation in parliament according to the will of the voters. This is the state of democracy in Malta. Shameful. Arnold Cassola Independent candidate Dated survey I write on behalf of the Malta Medical Students' Association (MMSA), in response to the report 'Omertà: 1 in 3 medical students would not report 'serious misconduct''. The many medical students who came across the article were quite confused, with all of them never even hearing of the survey that is claiming to have been circulated all medical stu- dents from the first to fifth year of the MD course. A quick dig into MMSA's records however, soon found that the data was collected in 2016: six years ago, meaning not one current medical student was surveyed. It is unclear why the data was published over five years after collection, with the authors making no mention of this fact in their paper. Furthermore, with an extremely low response rate of 10% of medical students, and the study itself claiming that "statistical analysis was largely inconclusive", it is grossly misleading to report that 1 in 3 medical students would not report serious misconduct. This unfairly sheds a negative light on current medical students, none of whom were surveyed. It is evident that a repeat study with recent data and a satisfactory response rate is required before any comments regarding academic misconduct in UM medical students can be made. Matthew Buttigieg President, MMSA Editorial Note: The report in question was based on an article submitted to and published in the latest issue of Xjenza, a publica- tion of the Malta Chamber of Scientist. There is no mention of the year in which the survey was carried out. Correction In the report of Sunday, 10 April, it was incorrectly stated that members of the Marsaskala Residents Network (VO/2200) were reported and taken to court by Eric Abela. But it was in fact members of the group SaveMarsaskala, which is now defunct, that were taken to court. The error is regretted.