Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/844299
12 YANNICK PACE MALTA'S electoral system, and by extension, its democracy, could be strengthened if the elec- toral system were to be replaced with one which was less condu- cive to clientelism, according to newly-elected Opposition MP Hermann Schiavone. Malta's parliament is elected through the Single Transferable Vote system which requires vot- ers to fill in a ballot paper con- taining a list of all the candidates running on a particular district by writing the number 'one' next to the name of their preferred candidate, and continuing in nu- merical order according to their subsequent preferences. The sys- tem was adopted in 1921 with changes being made at various points along the way. "The truth is that the two par- ties have always discussed re- forms to fix problems related to governability and proportional- ity," said Schiavone, an expert on Malta's electoral system. "The way in which it affects candidates has never been dis- cussed. Nobody has ever taken the initiative to talk about how the system affects candidates." On Tuesday, Schiavone used the parliamentary adjournment time to discuss some of the sys- tem's aspects which, he said, were unfair on candidates and needed reform, and in comments to MaltaToday insisted that the moment was right for such a dis- cussion. "This is the right moment to talk about electoral reform, and not on the eve of an election," he said. While this legislature is his first, Schiavone has been politi- cally active for many years and is known to be an expert on Malta's STV system, which is the subject of his doctoral thesis. One the problems with the sys- tem is the fact that candidates vy- ing for a parliamentary seat must compete with candidates from the same party, rather than can- didates from rival parties. According to Schiavone this re- sults in candidates being forced to resort to giveaways, rather than policy, to differentiate themselves from other candi- dates. "We have a very big problem with clientelism and we must find a way of reining it in by dis- cussing different systems where candidates are not so heavily in- fluenced by voters," he said. Removing the surname factor A well-known characteristic of the STV in Maltese politics is what is commonly known as the donkey-vote, where voters intending to vote for all the can- didates of a particular party give their number one vote to the can- didate at the top of the list before continuing with the remaining candidates from top to bottom. With candidates listed alpha- betically on the ballot sheet, this leads candidates whose surname begins with the letter 'A' being favoured over those whose sur- name begins with letters occur- ring later in the alphabet. One way to address this, said Schiavone, is the Robson's Rota- tion system. "Say you have 500 registered voters in a district, and five can- didates representing each party," he explained. "The system would see 100 ballot papers printed with one candidate first on the list, while the next 100 would have another candidate's name on top and so on." This way, he said, all candidates would have an equal chance of winning votes on the basis of them being at the top of the list. While the implementation of such a measure would be rela- tively easy, Schiavone suggested there might be considerable re- sistance to it among MPs. "It's like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas," he said. "Have maltatoday, SUNDAY, 2 JULY 2017 News 'Now is the time for electoral reform' Newly elected Nationalist MP Hermann Schiavone A well-known characteristic of the STV in Maltese politics is what is commonly known as the donkey-vote, where voters intending to vote for all the candidates of a particular party give their number one vote to the candidate at the top of the list before continuing with the remaining candidates from top to bottom.