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Only a few may have noticed, but in a live TV show on Friday, Labour opposition leader Alfred Sant signalled his party’s agreement to a five per cent national electoral threshold for the first time. Since being elected leader of the MLP in 1992 Dr Sant has vehemently opposed such a national threshold. The matter is being discussed in talks going on behind closed doors between the three parties on electoral reform.
To many it was a fleeting statement, but Alfred Sant’s comment signalled a departure from Labour’s traditional opposition to the Gonzi Commission’s proposal for a five per cent national threshold on first count votes. The Gonzi Commission set up before the 1996 election discussed electoral reform to no avail.
Such an electoral reform would open the way for Malta’s third political party and possibly other new parties to elect their representatives in parliament. But MaltaToday has now discovered that the Nationalist party is suggesting the threshold should rise from what it had originally suggested - five per cent - to around eight per cent or from around 13,000 first count votes to 21,800 votes.
In these tripartite talks, the Nationalist party has argued that should a five per cent quota be adopted, the hunters and Norman Lowell could make inroads and a stalemate now appears to have been reached.
The Greens know that their only chance to elect a deputy is to group all the votes on a national level.
Currently the cumbersome and archaic single transferable electoral system inherited from Malta’s colonial period places a 16 per cent threshold or around 3,200 votes in a constituency of 20,000 voters. With a five per cent threshold the Greens would need to garner about 13,000 votes and would elect three deputies. But if the PN has its way and gets the eight per cent threshold it would mean the Greens, or any other political party that may appear, would have to win about 21,000 votes.
All parties are aware that a five per cent threshold would make it easier for the electorate to believe that their vote is not wasted and the urge to cast a vote for a third party would grow. On the other hand, the Labour party has probably come round to acknowledging that a successful Green party will take up clusters of dissident PN votes making it easier for the MLP to clench the next government
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