|
James Debono
Labour MP Evarist Bartolo believes that a party gaining 4,000 votes on a national level should be represented in parliament, declaring that it “does not make sense that one can get elected with less than 4,000 votes from one district but a party which gets the same amount of votes from one district is excluded from parliament.”
Bartolo said he believed two electoral quotas should be introduced, a district quota and a national quota, where whoever gets more than this quota on a national level should get seats in parliament.
Evarist Bartolo’s first declaration on the need of electoral reforms was made during TV programme Int X’ Tahseb?
This declaration by a prominent Labour MP who is also the party’s spokesperson on tourism is bound to leave an impact on talks on electoral reforms which are going on between the three parties. It indicates that many in the MLP are warming up to the idea of third party representation in parliament.
In the talks held within the 1994 Gonzi Commission, the MLP had opposed the idea of a national threshold that would allow parties parliamentary representation without having to pass an electoral quota.
One of the thorniest issues in current discussions on electoral reform is the introduction of a national threshold.
Most European countries like Germany have thresholds of five per cent. Italy has a lower threshold of four per cent. Cyprus has an even lower threshold of less than two per cent.
On the other hand EU aspirant Turkey has a threshold of 10 per cent. This is the highest in Europe. In Turkey this has resulted in an absurd situation where a party with just 30 per cent has won more than sixty per cent of the seats.
Whether Malta will opt for a Turkish, a German, an Italian or a Cypriot solution remains to be seen. But the aura of secrecy around the tripartite talks on electoral reform resembles that of a papal conclave – the three parties have agreed to keep these discussions secret.
jdebono@newsworksltd.com
|
