So long, democracy

Electoral reform will never happen because the two main political parties are dead set on their own version of democracy

Once again, a depressing conclusion to the botched tripartite electoral talks between the political parties, signalling the death of electoral reform since the first hopeful attempt of the 1994 Gonzi Commission. The passing away of reform was the announcement that the Nationalists wanted Gozo integrated back into one single electoral district, pre-electoral revision, partly intended to expose Labour for having put the spokes in the wheel of reform, claiming it does not believe in Gozo’s regionalism.

Discussion is going to continue in parliament, where Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has presented a bill to amend the Constitution and return Gozo to a single district. The PN wants to see whether Labour really believes in Gozo’s regionalism, whether it really wants the sister island to be a single whole district. Of course they do, Labour say, but not at the expense of a domino effect on the other electoral boundaries in Malta. Clearly enjoying better proportionality since the last electoral revision which had split Gozo after its population exceeded the national average for each district, Labour now claims the PN wants to use Gozo reunification as an excuse for gerrymandering.
And yet despite electoral reform being dubbed a “priority” by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, electoral talks went up in smoke after they stopped on Tuesday evening, clearly out of a lack of enthusiasm. Accusations are rife. PN secretary-general Joe Saliba says Labour doesn’t want Gozo to be a single district, it doesn’t want a national threshold and does not want a coalition – “these are concrete facts. The last time we met, they stated that for any agreement made it would not take effect until after the next general elections.”
To that, the Prime Minister’s spokesperson says electoral reform “was, is, and remains a priority for the Prime Minister,” and that it’s the MLP which does not seem to consider electoral reform as a priority. One of the reasons why Labour has been so intransigent over the talks was its refusal to accept any agreed reform before the next general election. “Given that electoral reforms are a priority for the Prime Minister this condition is unacceptable,” Gonzi’s spokesperson said.
But Michael Falzon, who led the talks for Labour, says such a fundamental change to Malta’s electoral laws would not have been wise so late in the day as an election approaches. “What we are asking here is, that as a country, we should weigh very carefully how wise it would be to introduce certain fundamental changes at this stage, relatively close to the next general election?”
The conclusion: a rigid, status quo for the two main political parties, whose onerous proposals do not need the grouchy protests of Alternattiva Demokratika, the small Green party, to show that not everyone is ready to make the electoral reform Malta so desperately needs.
At stake was a question of governability to which Labour was keen on holding on to. Saliba claims the MLP came with an all-or-nothing package, and that it was not ready to put any agreement on electoral reform into force until after the next general elections. “We wasted a whole year of discussions.”
For Labour, it was paramount that in the event of a relative majority where more than two parties are elected to parliament, the party with more than 45 per cent of the vote is giving the right to govern. With the last electoral district revision still in force, only stricter proportionality for Labour is guaranteed, for years having lamented the disproportionate allocation of seats after it was elected to government in 1996 with an 8,000-vote majority, but with three seats less than the PN.
AD accepted the high national threshold of 7.5 per cent proposed by the PN, which however puts into question how serious the party in government was about electoral reform and whether it was ready to offer an accommodating hand. As they face the prospects of the end of their relatively uninterrupted 20-year rule, with a buoyant Labour Party on the horizon, it seemed there was little readiness to consider the option of a third party, or rather, that of a coalition with a third party in the event that no party gets an absolute majority in 2008.
Because the Nationalists’ return to power will be no mean feat, laboured as it is by economic policies which have not endeared it to the electorate, who in turn have clearly expressed disillusionment in the last rounds of local council elections. As Harry Vassallo cried foul, outlining the parties’ proposals that were intended to set a high hurdle – not just for AD – but for any third party that wants to break the two-party deadlock, it was also clear that Labour is not in any mood for reform, or to be more exact, for more democracy.

Labour’s governability
That Labour was clearly intent on ensuring no fancy democratic games spoilt its chances of being elected to govern was its insistence of a 45 per cent majority prize. Labour wanted “governability”: if just two parties win seats to parliament, the matter would be solved by simple majority, and strict proportionality would be guaranteed by matching the percentage of seats to the same percentage of first count votes.
The problematic area was the scenario in which more than two parties are elected to parliament, and where no party gets an absolute majority.
In the Maltese electoral system, if a third party gets elected to parliament, and no single party gets an absolute majority, it is the party or coalition with the greatest number of seats that governs. In such an event the relative majority party can end up in opposition.
Say AD gains representation in parliament, with the PN getting less votes than Labour, but with neither party getting the absolute majority. In such a case, the law allows the party, or rather the coalition of parties with the greater number of seats combined to govern. Which means that, a possible PN-AD alliance such as that toyed with back in the post-EU referendum election, would ruin Labour’s chances of being elected.
Labour is aware that AD can bite a chunk of votes from the Nationalist Party, in the process helping it win by a relative majority. In fact, it is not an unlikely scenario: in the 2004 European elections, where candidates fought it out on a single national district, the MLP held its ground at 48.4 per cent while the PN shrunk to 40 per cent and AD garnering an impressive 9 per cent.
Labour’s proposal was to award the party with a relative majority of a “certain strength”, in this case with more than 45 per cent of the vote, the faculty to govern – as Michael Falzon states, “in the interest of the country’s stability and governability, with a one-seat majority – as is the case in Italy’s system.”
At such a stage, it means coalitions – say a PN-AD alliance with a combined vote of 55 per cent – does not come into play. “Coalition politics could come into play where there is no party which has the strength of more than 45 per cent. At this stage of Malta’s political development, such steps are extremely positive. We have had no experience of coalition politics in our recent political history but I’m not saying we should not have coalitions. These are gigantic steps forward and for a country in our economic situation, we cannot afford not having governability. This is in the interest of the Maltese people and the country as a whole,” Falzon says.
For Harry Vassallo, the proposal was “outrageous”, meaning AD could never govern in a coalition with more combined seats or votes.
“Labour has a problem which I can understand,” Joe Saliba says, “it cannot govern with a one-seat majority because it spent 22 months in power the last time it was in power. And the Nationalists managed to govern with a one-seat majority for a full five years. Labour demanded a majority prize which would give them governance if they achieve 45 per cent, and that would have meant that the other parties obtaining 55 per cent would not govern. Labour came with no other proposal. I find it surprising they are assured of a 45 per cent majority when they constantly talk of getting an absolute majority in the next election.”

National threshold
The PN, on its part, proposed the elimination of cross-party voting, the practice of voting across party lists which has accompanied the Maltese voter for the past decades, even if very rarely utilised by voters. On a more onerous demand, it pushed for a high electoral threshold of 7.5 per cent, some 22,500 votes. Although AD managed to surpass this mark in the 2004 European elections, surpassing this mark when the governability of the country is at stake would have been an impossible feat for a party with very limited resources.
AD secretary-general Stephen Cachia says the threshold was too high, coincidentally similar to its showing in the EP elections. “No European country has such a high threshold, except for Turkey which has a 10 per cent threshold. AD wanted a threshold of 5 per cent, while keeping the district thresholds of 16.6 per cent. In that case, parties would be able to win representation to parliament both on popular vote and district votes. By surpassing the national threshold it would be awarded a proportional amount of seats, but it would still win a seat if it wins 16.6 per cent of the vote at district level.”
Labour was in agreement with the national threshold for 7.5 per cent, given certain safeguards. What bothered AD was the Nationalist’s proposal to remove cross-party voting and the invalidation of candidates being elected across districts. Stephen Cachia said AD only agreed with the 7.5 per cent threshold in the case that no party gets an absolute majority, in a bid to secure governability for the party with the greatest majority.
Indeed, the PN’s refusal to allow district elections in the case of a national threshold betrays its supposed commitment to Gozo’s regionalism. In the case of a high 7.5 per cent threshold, it could make a independent Gozitan candidate with no party affiliation impossible to elect, because there wouldn’t be enough Gozitan votes to elect him. It just makes it impossible for an independent candidate with regional appeal to get representation in parliament. Take the 1947 election when the Jones Party and the Gozo Party won all of Gozo’s five seats between them. If that happened today without any party reaching the 7.5 per cent threshold, those five seats would be lost.
But in the absence of other challenges to the two party system, AD suffers the full brunt of the PN’s proposals – a very high threshold and virtual impossibility to get elected on a district level by focusing all the party’s resources in a couple of districts. “All such measures affect only AD, and are tailored to minimise the chances of representation of Greens,” Vassallo said on Thursday. AD had accepted “a very difficult” 5 per cent threshold but now his party will have to concentrate on getting elected “the hard way”: “After moving the goalposts around for over a decade the wheels are found to have rusted solid in a position which all agreed over ten years ago was unacceptable… The Maltese are not an undemocratic people. It is their political leadership which is wholly lacking in respect for the principles which give them legitimate authority.”

Problem Gozo
But even while the PN wants to keep Gozo a single district, problems still exist on how to account for the island’s growing population. At present, the idea that Labour is creating difficulties for the repristinisation of the thirteenth district is being sold lock, stock and barrel with recriminations for the 1981 electoral fluke, when Labour was elected with a majority of seats but not with a majority of votes, thanks to its gerrymandering. Nobody, PN secretary-general Joe Saliba said, can accuse the Nationalists of “tampering with the electoral districts”.
Indeed that is Labour’s fear if returning Gozo to a single district means toppling once again the electoral divisions which today suit the party fine. Strict proportionality remains its main concern for the upcoming elections, for years having had to contend with a disproportionate allocation of seats vis-à-vis the number of votes it garners.
In Malta, voter populations in each of its 13 electoral districts must not deviate by five per cent more or less than the average of the national voting population across each district. By October 2004, Gozo and Comino’s voting base had deviated by 7.55 per cent – believed to have been the result of a population inflation from thousands of Maltese residents whose identity cards are registered in Gozo, where they usually own a second residence.
So the electoral commission proceeded to split up the thirteenth district by annexing the Ghajnsielem locality to Malta’s northernmost constituency, the twelfth district, which comprises Mellieha and Mgarr. The Gozo split ultimately resulted in a domino effect over several other constituencies whose electoral quotas had to be rearranged by cutting off and annexing localities in the other districts.
The electoral commission’s revision of electoral boundaries provoked protests from the Nationalist Party after the redrawn boundaries split Ghajnsielem from the Gozo district. But the revision clearly swayed in Labour’s favour. Removing the Natoinalist-leaning Ghajnsielem increased Labour’s chances of making inroads in Gozo. More importantly, Swieqi, part of the PN stronghold in the tenth district, was ‘part-exchanged’ for Gzira, a Labour locality, effectively meaning that the PN had lost its fourth seat in the district which includes Sliema, St Julians and Pembroke. That is why dismembering the PN stronghold in the tenth district by removing Swieqi and adding Gzira awards Labour a much-needed second seat in the constituency.
Labour are now keen not to see a reversal in the electoral proportionality they have gained. Claiming it supports reverting Gozo back to an unbroken single district, it however does not want to see other electoral boundaries being changed around to favour the PN, fearing the upheaval it would face in an ensuing district reshuffle across the rest of Malta.
Harry Vassallo scoffs at the Nationalist Party’s claims. He points out that the growing Gozitan electorate would result in under-representation for the sister island. “It is ludicrous that the PN purports to be the champion of Gozitans. All three parties agree that Gozo should not be partitioned, however keeping it separate and electing only 5 MPs while its population continues to grow, as the PN proposes, would mean the level of representation for Gozitans would be progressively eroded over the years.”
Falzon agrees that technically this would result in under-representation, but the rule of strict proportionality would remove this problem. “We proposed that Gozo can be one large district returning five MPs, and in such case the twelfth district would be a smaller district returning five MPs – but we believe the PN’s reason to have Gozo become a single district was just an excuse for gerrymandering.”

Election Scenarios – which party gets to govern in the Maltese elections?

1 – Absolute majority
Since the 1987 amendments, the party elected to govern has been the one with the absolute majority of 50% plus one vote. However, when Labour won an absolute majority by 8,000 votes in 1996, the Nationalists had a three-seat majority due to the allocation of the electoral districts. A constitutional safeguard awarded Labour the extra seats needed to have a one-seat majority in parliament, but the arrangement proved problematic due to the rebellion of former Labour leader Dom Mintoff against Alfred Sant.

2 – Relative majority
Even in the case of a relative majority, where any party winning seats to parliament does not get more than 50 per cent plus one vote, it is the party with the greatest relative majority that governs.

3 – Multiparty relative majority
In this scenario, if more than two parties – for example Labour, the Nationalist Party, and Alternattiva Demokratika – all win seats to parliament, it will be the party, or even the coalition of parties with the most seats that governs. In such a scenario, where Labour might gain the greatest relative majority, it will lose the right to govern if a PN-AD coalition results in the greatest number of combined seats.

Hypothetical scenarios – the proposals in the electoral talks

1 – Labour’s 45% governability
Labour wanted to ensure that in the case of a relative majority, the party to govern is the one with more than 45 per cent of the vote, even in the event that two other parties, for example a PN-AD coalition, had a greater number of seats combined than Labour with more than 45 per cent of the vote – thereby dismantling the multiparty relative majority scenario.

2 – PN’s 7.5% threshold
With the PN’s proposal for a high national threshold, any party which gains more than 7.5 per cent of the national vote (some 22,500 votes at present) will be allocated representation in parliament. However, by proposing the invalidation of candidates elected in districts, it would mean more disenfranchised votes by setting up a high bar for the national vote and less chances for candidates with a regional or district appeal.

3 – The 1994 5% threshold
The 5 per cent threshold AD has hung onto since the 1994 Gonzi Commission would mean that any party gaining more than five per cent of the national vote would be awarded representation in parliament, while maintaining the 16.6 per cent threshold at district level. In such a scenario, coalitions would ensue.