Don’t get it wrong

In my article “The solution is in the problem” published on Sunday 1st March I stated that I will follow up with a proposal on “how the Prime Minister can also have an equal representation not just in parliament but also in cabinet.”

Last Friday Government tabled a Bill called “An ACT to amend the Constitution of Malta and other laws to ensure de facto equality between men and women in politics.” Unfortunately, and similar to the the proposal made public in the consultation document “Gender Balance in Parliament Reform” of the 26th March 2019, the Act will only trigger the application of the Corrective Gender Mechanism after casual clections to fill in the seats vacated by those MPs elected in two divisions (districts). Casual elections are conducted weeks after polling day.

In the last three general elections of 2017, 2013 and 2008 the casual elections took place two, four and six weeks respectively, after polling day. If we stick to the current arrangement, and proposal, the next Prime Minister would have already constituted the Cabinet of Ministers before the corrective mechanism takes place. As things stand today, especially because of the power of incumbency, the Cabinet will surely lack female faces. The Bill does not fulfil the expectations raised by the Prime Minister on Wednesday 19th February when he was quoted to have said that the number of women in parliament and the government is unacceptable for him. Furthermore, there is also a theory that the under-represented gender MPs elected through the corrective mechanism may be viewed inferior to their counterparts since they will be elected so late in the day.

What is precluding us from having the Corrective Gender Mechanism triggered on the same day the vote counting takes place and thus have all MPs elected on the same day? Such a move ensures that the Prime Minister will have a full complement of MPs to choose from to form a cabinet.

How could this be done? Simple

At the end of the counting process, after the five elected candidates from each division are known, the corrective mechanism in accordance with Article 52 of the Constitution kicks in. This mechanism assigns additional seats to a given party to ensure that there is proportionality between the percentage of first count votes a party wins nationwide and the corresponding number of seats it wins. Once the number of seats to be allocated are determined, the candidates of the under-represented party that were unelected and garnered the highest number of votes in the last count irrespective of electoral division they contested in are declared elected.

Thus, applying another corrective mechanism at the end of the vote counting process, this time round being the gender balance mechanism, will not be a first.

Yet, this will not be possible as long as the casual elections as we know them today are held days after the counting process and after the respective political parties have decided on which candidate will give up which division of the two they got elected from.

Best Performer vs Highest number of votes

The corrective mechanism in accordance with Article 52 of the Constitution elects the candidates according to the number of votes obtained. Since the introduction of this mechanism another amendment was made to the Constitution Article 61 in 2007 through which it was determined that irrespective of the number of voters registered in Gozo the island will remain one electoral division. This means that the number of eligible voters in the 13th division is much higher than the number of voters in the other 12 divisions. In the last general election, for instance, the 13th division had 28,680 registered voters compared to 27,106 in the 7th division which was the largest of the remaining twelve.

This gives any unelected candidate in the 13th division a higher probability of being elected since the number of votes in the last count would be higher than that of any candidate in any other division. In fact, in the last general election Frederick Azzopardi was the first unelected PN candidate having won 3,585 votes whilst Carm Mifsud Bonnici was second with 3,437 votes. In that election both candidates were elected. On the other hand, if the mechanism had to elect the unelected candidates with the highest percentage of votes in the last count from the division’s quota Carm Mifsud Bonnici would have topped the list with 85.2% whilst Frederick Azzopardi would have been second with 83.3%. This method of calculation makes it much fairer as it elects what is known as the Best Performer. It is a known fact that percentages are far better to compare if the starting numbers in the different groups are not equal.

If the principle of Best Performer is applied, then we can also move on to have the casual elections on the same day with the vote counting thus opening to the possibility of also having the Corrective Gender Mechanism on the same day too.

Casual Elections on the same day

To date, and according to Article 109 of the General Election Act, it is up to the candidate elected in two divisions to declare “which of the two divisions he elects to represent” and thus considered to have vacated the seat in the other division. This decision is generally taken after the Executive Committees of both parties represented in Parliament are convened and decide which seats are to be vacated.

Such a methodology departs from the STV’s definition of being a system which gives proportional representation through voters ranking candidates. If the Best Performer principle is applied here, the candidate will vacate the seat in which he least performed, i.e. the division in which he attained the least percentage of votes from the quota when they were declared elected. This way the casual elections to fill in the vacated seat by each candidate elected from two divisions can take place immediately and following the introduction of electronic counting the results can be known within a few minutes even if we had to stick to the current countback mechanism to declare the which candidate is elected to fill in the vacate seat.

I would also recommend considering the introduction of the Best Performer principle to elect the candidate which best performs in the division which has been vacated. Most of the time, these candidates are the ones which would not make it in a subsequent casual election because the countback penalizes good performers in the casual election stage.

If we had to take the last general election, through the Best Performer system it would have been Antoine Borg to get elected in the 7th division to fill in the seat vacated by Beppe Fenech Adami and not Godfrey Farrugia. Antoine Borg was left hanging with 3,256 votes in the last count (891 short of the quota in count 25) while Godfrey Farrugia was eliminated in the 21st count with 1,514 votes, less than half of what Antoine Borg had obtained.

Corrective Gender nism on counting day Mecha

Whichever mechanism is chosen to elect the candidates to fill in the seats vacated by those MPs who were elected in two divisions will give us the composition of the House on counting day rather than days after the counting process would have ended. Thus, the proposed mechanism to reach a gender balanced House triggers if at that point the number of Members of Parliament of the under- represented sex is less than 40% of all the Members of Parliament. I once again suggest that the candidates to be elected through this mechanism should also be chosen through the Best Performer Principle.

Notwithstanding this the end result would be that the composition of the House will be known by the end of the counting process and thus the next day the Prime Minister will have a gender balanced parliamentary group to choose the Cabinet from and if we want a genuine balance such balance needs to be also reflected in the Cabinet.

Angelito Sciberras is a former Assistant Secretary General to Partit Nazzjonalista and Director of the Partit Nazzjonalista electoral office ELCOM.