Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1522936
13 ANALYSIS maltatoday | SUNDAY • 23 JUNE 2024 lunge at the duopoly's hegemony ment meant that when a third party wins no seats – say, even if clinching a national vote of 10% – it will be the party with a relative majority that gets to govern, with more seats added to it by force of the Constitu- tion. But if a third party does win a seat in any district, and other parties only have a relative ma- jority, it will then be the party with a majority of seats that gets to govern. It reinforced the narrative that third parties could be agents of instability for dominant parties. The system was further fine- tuned in 2007 that ensured the party with the most votes would perforce be granted a proportionate number of seats, rather than just a minimum one-seat majority. But this ex- posed another major flaw in the system. While the seats of parties elected to parliament could be increased to reflect their vote share, this can never apply to small parties not elect- ed to parliament, even with a sizeable national vote. Effectively, it means that MPs who get added to the House by dint of this constitution- al mechanism could very well represent even fewer voters than third parties left out of parliament. This problem was exacerbat- ed by more recent amendments aimed at increasing the num- ber of women in parliament, with the addition of female MPs to reach a gender quota in the House – but then this amendment only applies in the case of two parties, ignoring to- tally the possible election of a third party. 3. Missing: a national quota One way of solving this prob- lem is to introduce a national quota and applying the 1996 amendment to all parties who surpass this threshold. But this raises another ques- tion: can a national quota coex- ist with the STV system? As shown in reports present- ed to the Gonzi Commission in the 1990s, the STV can coexist with a national quota. What is lacking is the political will to implement the reform. In the 1990s, the discussions in the Gonzi Commission in- cluded representatives of the PN, PL and AD. Tasked with re- viewing the electoral system and proposing updates to enhance fairness and proportionality, a report by Prof. Anton Buhagiar proposed a reform in which the total number of seats allocated to each party is equivalent to the proportion of votes obtained on a national basis, with the intro- duction of a national quota. But the seats would still be allocated based on the STV result in each district. Crucial- ly, the system also allowed the transfer of votes, up to the last possible stage, even between candidates of different parties. The commission's final report concluded that Buhagiar's sys- tem "retains the voting meth- od to which the Maltese peo- ple have gotten used to while changing in a radical manner the counting method and the method of allocating seats and assigning them to candidates." In this sense, a solution to Malta's electoral quandary has existed since 1994. But the Commission failed to reach an agreement on wheth- er there should be a nation- al threshold and on how this threshold should be. It also failed to agree on what happens to the votes given to the candi- dates of parties who fail to get elected to parliament. The Buhagiar report offered a solution that is readily available and can be implemented with- out doing away with other fun- damentals of the Maltese voting system, but it is still unlikely for both parties to agree to changes which will erode their hegem- ony especially now that they seem more vulnerable. And this begs the question as to whether third parties should focus on electoral change at the risk of striking the image of whining outsiders, or strive for success through the present system, maybe even at the risk of sounding delusional. 1921: 4 1924: 4 1926: 3* 1933: 3 1939: 3 1945: 5 1950: 5 1951: 4 1953: 3 1955: 2 1962: 5 1966: 2 1971: 2 1976: 2 1981: 2 1987: 2 1992: 2 1996: 2 1998: 2 2003: 2 2008: 2 2013: 2 2017: 3** 2022: 2 *an independent was also elected **2 MPs from the Democratic Party were elected on PN list *Includes Boffa's Malta Workers Party which split from the Labour Party. **Included 1.56% who voted for PD whose candidates formed part of the PN list Number of parties elected Share of voters opting for third parties in post-war elections and seats won Year % Seats 1947 22 9 1950 39.2 16* 1951 26.9 11* 1953 17.3 3* 1955 3.1 0 1962 24.1 9 1966 9.1 0 1971 1 0 1976 0.02 0 1981 0.01 0 1987 0.2 0 1992 1.73 0 1996 1.48 0 1998 1.22 0 2003 0.69 0 2008 1.86 0 2013 1.83 0 2017 2.86** 2** 2022 3.15 0 Malta's electoral system has been tweaked over the years to ensure that first-count votes obtained by the political parties determine who is in government, but parliamentary representation remains tied to the district-based system. (Photo: James Bianchi/MaltaToday)