The Constitutional amendments on proportionality, announced by Justice and Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg in Parliament on Thursday, will only serve the interests of the two main political parties in Parliament, according to the two other small parties.
Under the amendments, agreed between the Government and the Opposition, when only two parties are elected to the House of Representatives, parliamentary seats will be assigned strictly in proportion to the votes each party has won nationally.
This will mean that the electoral boundaries will become irrelevant for the strength of the parties in Parliament, removing the possibility of gerrymandering to either’s advantage.
However, Alternattiva Demokratika (AD)’s deputy chairman Stephen Cachia in a statement on Friday dismissed the electoral agreement cooked up between the two main parties as “cowardly”.
The agreement will only appease the Nationalist and Labour parties, especially since the threshold to elect a party in Parliament remains at 16.7 per cent for each district.
If the MLP and PN really believed in strict proportionality they would have widened the clause to apply to all parties – easily attainable if there was agreement on a national quota.
Cachia said that the agreement reached between the two parties in no way eliminates the risk of a perverse result if more than two parties are elected to government. Nevertheless, AD has full faith that the electorate will one day put a stop to these antics and partisan manoeuvres.
“The people have the power of the vote and should have the courage to use it to remove once and for all the partisan muzzle infiltrating the country,” Cachia said.
Likewise, far-right party Azzjoni Nazzjonali (AN) leader Josie Muscat has accused the PN and the MLP of having agreed to create a national quota to meet their particular requirements to alternate as government and opposition, thereby ignoring the votes cast by smaller parties contesting elections.
“Once they have agreed to consider votes on a national basis for their own purposes, there is no reason why same principle should not apply to votes cast for smaller parties to ensure their representation in Parliament based on each national quota they obtain, thus reflecting the real wishes of the electorate on a national basis.
“Azzjoni Nazzjonali has already proposed taking into account the national vote and at the same time bringing down the number of seats in Parliament. But what is being proposed is a reversal of our proposal, in that it will lessen democracy not increase it.
“It is now up to each and every citizen to decide how long to remain the plaything of his political masters. The citizen has already learnt how his money has been quietly distributed between the two parties without his approval.
“It now seems, that in his name, a system that will perpetuate a two-party dictatorship is about to be adopted. It is up to each and every one of us to realise that this is a watershed in our history.
“Either the politicians that speak in our name accept that they are there to represent our wishes, or that it is the citizen that is there to accept what his political master dictates,” Muscat told MaltaToday.

czahra@mediatoday.com.mt