Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1467182
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 8 MAY 2022 OPINION 3 LETTERS & EDITORIAL maltatoday | SUNDAY • 8 MAY 2022 Mikiel Galea Letters & Clarifications BOV and Deiulemar: who is responsible? THIS week we found out that an in- ternal investigation in 2015 by Bank of Valletta into the trust services connected to the Deiulemar shipping company found no wrongdoings by the bank's employees. So, if there was no wrongdoing on the part of the employees, who in BOV had done the due diligence exercise? Who had recommended taking over the Trust in 2009, when a Rome crim- inal court in 2004 had already ruled that the Deiulemar company had un- der-declared liabilities of €700 million? Why was this internal report not made available to shareholders? Why all the secrecy? And if the BOV is insisting that "it's important to note that we have a strong case performance", then why has BOV been found guilty by the Ital- ian courts over and over again? Why did BOV dupe shareholders for years stating that it had a strong legal case? Past and present directors do not have any blame at all? Are they not go- ing to contribute anything to the €182 million and to the many court expens- es, all borne by shareholders? Basically: who at BOV is going to shoulder responsibility for this disas- trous venture? Arnold Cassola Swieqi Why not increase MPs anyway? SO Malta now has 12 additional MPs to its 67, thanks to a well-meaning strategy to increase representation for the under-represented gender. Defi- nitely, an interesting was of kicking down the door of the old boys' club. Except that, with some MPs co-opt- ed at a vote count that is far less than Alternattiva Demokratika's own can- didates, it stands to reason that in the manner it has been devised, Malta's quotas system is democratically un- sound. It is one thing to co-opt MPs from the under-represented gender; but automatically exluding other candidates because their party is not represented in the House, is totally anomalous. What we have here however, is a basis for deeper reform. So now Malta agrees with having a larger parliament. And so it should. If the island elected 7 MPs from each of the 13 districts (for a parliament of 91 members), we could expect quotas to fall to around 2,800- 3,000 votes. Such a low threshold means popular third-party candidates stand a better chance to be elected by staying longer in the race. One can also argue that by diluting the power of constituency MPs, an electoral district's voters would have more MPs to refer to, rather than just concentrating the bulk of representa- tion into one party heavyweight. Having said that, nothing should stop Malta from instituting a nation- al minimum threshold which would guarantee any party who reaches a minimum number of votes nationally, some form of representation. There is now absolutely no argument to be made against this, now that the two parties allowed themselves to engineer the gender quotas solely in favour of their duopoly. If anything, gender representation should be guaranteed by equal rep- resentation in candidates lists: say, a gradual start from 30% to 50% rep- resentation of the under-represented gender over the next decade of both general and local elections. Now that would be a real challenge. Justin Caruana Mosta