Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/460957
maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 11 FEBRUARY 2015 2 News Electoral expert says majority should go down to seven seats MIRIAM DALLI IT took the political parties three years and lengthy discussions to thrash out an amendment that comes the closest to interpreting the results of a general election and the political representation in parliament. And now calls about the need of more electoral reform rekindled last week, perhaps not so much between the two major political parties only, after the First Hall of the Civil Court in its constitution- al jurisdiction declared that the Nationalist Party should be given two additional seats, to hold 32 in parliament, while Labour retains its 39. True to form, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil immediately called on the Electoral Commission to respect the court's decision while Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said the government would appeal the judgement. Although the court's decision does not change the huge, 36,000- vote difference between Labour and PN, PN candidate and elector- al expert Hermann Schiavone said that the court's decision "should be respected". "A fair representation of the re- sult translates into a seven-seat majority and not nine. Applying the judgement would respect the electorate's vote," he argued. The wrangling was the result of vote blunders by the electoral com- mission during the vote counting in 2013: the court, presided by Ms Justice Jacqueline Padovani Gri- ma, heard that a batch of 50 first preference votes belonging to then PN candidate Claudette Buttigieg were wrongly placed in the pi- geonhole of PN candidate Michael Asciak, also a contender on the eighth district. Electoral commissioner Vanni Ganado told the court that the mistake most probably occurred in the first count. Given that the vote difference between Labour candidate Edward Scicluna and Buttigieg on the first count was of just eight votes, Ganado said the eighth district should have elected Buttigieg, and not Scicluna. According to the court, this also meant that Labour should have elected a total of 38 MPs, while the PN should have elected 27. Electoral law allows a recount when a specific count is still open. But a count cannot be reopened if the following count is already underway. In this case, the batch of first preference votes was only found when the counting assist- ants started sorting Asciak's vot- ing ballots. A protest was lodged. Labour's head of electoral office, Louis Gatt, explained that politi- cal parties elect representatives to oversee the vote counting process in the counting hall. Every party would have its counting assistants [who sort the votes], the counting supervisors [those who oversee the sorting and counting of votes] and the counting hall agents [the ones who stand behind the Perspex overseeing everything]. "The aim of such a representation is to ensure a political party's right to watch over the whole process. During this process, every candi- date has the right to request a re- count. If no objections are raised, the commission moves on to the next count," he said. Asked whether the mistake was the result of an oversight by the party's representatives, Gatt said that party representatives includ- ed delegates and sub-delegates "who had all the right to request a recount". Padovani Grima used a math- ematical formula, listed in the statute book, to determine the seat representation, based on the prin- ciple of proportionality. The judgement reduces the seat difference between the two par- ties by two – to seven from nine; the redress as determined by the court adds two seats. If the judge- ment were to be implemented, the court would have increased the to- tal number of seats in parliament from 69 to 71. Gatt explained that the current electoral law was amended in 2007 to better interpret the result of first count votes and seats in par- liament. "As a result of this amendment, once the results are published and the parties see how many candi- dates were elected, a mathemati- cal formula kicks in to adjust the number of seats the party with the lower number of elected can- didates should hold. The numbers must obviously be odd as parlia- ment can't operate on an even number," Gatt said. He admits that one can never be precise but the system adopted so far is the one that mostly guar- antees a fair representation of number one votes obtained and seats in parliament. Gatt added that the votes dif- ference between Labour and PN during the 2008 election was of just 1,500. "The two sides obvi- ously can't hold the same number of seats and the PN had a one-seat majority even though the 1,500 votes in reality reflected 'half-a- seat'. This is the system that we have and there are regulations that must be followed." "The results of past elections don't make a difference. There is one, clear formula which ap- plies depending on the majority achieved," Schiavone said. Schiavone agreed that despite the "improvements" over the years, there still remained loopholes. "We always discover something new… even in this case, where there's only one runner-up to fill in one of the seats. We have yet to see who the second candidate will be." 2007 electoral amendment 'closest way to interpret representation between first count votes and parliamentary seats' Abela, Said agree on need for electoral reform MATTHEW AGIUS LABOUR'S deputy leader for party affairs, Toni Abela has said the government intends appealing a court judgment by the First Hall of the Civil Court that awarded the PN two additional seats in parliament due to errors in the vote-counting process. "We think it is important that this issue is dealt with by the highest court in the land, the Constitutional Court. I believe the govern- ment will be doing the electorate a disservice if this issue is not brought before the Constitu- tional Court, if the judgment is not endorsed by that court to provide a point of reference for the future," Abela said on PBS's 'Reporter', hosted by Saviour Balzan. The First Hall of the Civil Court in its con- stitutional jurisdiction has awarded two extra seats in parliament to the opposition PN, to set off vote-counting errors that would have seen one PN candidate elected in each of the eighth and thirteenth electoral districts, instead of the PL candidates elected from those districts by the slimmest of majorities. PN secretary-general Chris Said said that on the eighth district, a batch of 50 votes had been mislabelled as belonging to another candidate, which resulted in the PL's Edward Scicluna being elected on the strength of only eight votes more than PN candidate Claudette Buttigieg. "This was hard to spot, as the 50 votes were labelled as belonging to Michael Axiaq, and this could not be seen from behind the perspex divider." On the thirteenth district, Said continued, 10 votes went missing and this was noted dur- ing the counting process. "Justyne Caruana was elected by nine votes more than PN can- didate Frederick Azzopardi." Said said he hoped this was not a delaying tactic that would prolong the case beyond the current legislature, however Abela countered that the court was well aware of the urgency. "We are forgetting that the mistake reflects the shortcomings of the PN, as the Electoral Commission was constituted under a PN gov- ernment and the election took place on their watch. Whoever was responsible for the elec- tions should also shoulder responsibility for the errors… you organised the elections, you were negligent," Abela taunted. Asked what was the point behind the PN case, Said acknowledged that the decision would not change who is in government but at least would do justice to the voters' wishes. Time for electoral reform? Balzan steered the discussion to deal with the issue of proportional representation and the current system, pointing out the fact that in the last general election, Alternattiva Demokratika obtained around 5,000 votes across the country and yet did not succeed to have a single candidate elected. According to Said, this would require a complete overhaul of the electoral system. Ac- knowledging that at the moment candidates require around 4,000 votes in a single district to be elected, Said pointed out that over the years several constitutional amendments have improved the proportional representation system. Abela observed that it was not uncommon for Western democratic elections to give anomalous results explaining, by way of ex- ample, that Al Gore had some 300,000 more votes than Bush, but still lost the US presiden- tial election in 2000. "I am amazed how the PN is suddenly so ea- ger to uphold the will of the people... When the Galdes report [on party financing, which sug- gested a national threshold of first count votes for a party to qualify for financial aid from the State] suggested the threshold to help small political parties, who came out against it? – The PN," he said. "Are you being serious?" Said retorted, ani- matedly. "You represent a party which spent five and a half years governing against the will of the people," he said, referring to the consti- tutional crisis following 1981 general elections where the PN obtained an absolute majority of votes, but managed only 31 seats in parlia- ment to the Labour Party's 34. Both guests agreed on the need for Consti- tutional reform, however. Said commented that reforms should not be made only in the electoral system, but also in the Constitution. Abela added that the PL manifesto was to re- form the Constitution, not only with respect to elections, but also to address other areas that need updating. "Maltese society is ultra pluralistic and a constitution should not only represent the two major parties, but society as a whole." Reporter, hosted by Saviour Balzan, airs eve- ry Monday at 20:40 on TVM2, with a repeat at 21:55 on TVM. Key positions at MTA left vacant MARTINA BORG THE Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) has said that there are posts within the organisation's marketing department that are currently vacant, and have been so for a long time now. In comments to MaltaToday, Nationalist MP Antoine Borg revealed that the positions that were vacant were mostly Destination Marketing Representatives working overseas. "These positions would be responsible for car- rying out the MTA's work in foreign countries like France, Germany and Italy. As you can imagine these vacancies would be particularly damaging as the people holding these posts would be responsible both for the work done abroad and for the reputation of the company," Borg added. Borg confirmed that he had asked Tourism Minister Edward Zammit Lewis a supplemen- tary question during Monday night's Parlia- mentary session, as to whether the ministry was aware of these vacancies, and whether anything was being done about the situation. The government acknowledged the situation following Borg's question, and Zammit Lewis insisted that efforts were being made to solve the issue, but the appropriate course of action was yet unclear. Borg said that the same was also valid for some positions within the Institute of Tourism Stud- ies (ITS), but that a ruling was expected in this case in the coming weeks. Borg urged the gov- ernment to take action about the issue as soon as possible. Louis Gatt Hermann Schiavone