Electoral system: reform or burial?

In his ‘It’s not the electoral system’’ (February 8), Ranier Fsadni contests a Times of Malta editorial which proposed scrapping the 13 districts and switching to the oft-touted single district. This, the editorial holds, could put an end to the duopoly stranglehold and open a door to a new local political scenario.

Actually, while claiming that it is not the system that is at fault, Fsadni indirectly invites his readers to a discussion on its faults and democratic deficits. It hardly needs reminding that this system was shaped by the LPNP duopoly over the last six decades.

The comments on the article by over 20 persons, some with five to seven interventions each, bear witness to the interest the topic has generated. Fsadni himself felt he had to respond no fewer than nine times to comments. Not surprisingly, perhaps, no member of parliament, past or present, felt it necessary to comment.

Fsadni maintains that if the system keeps giving repeatedly what, for many, are dismally depressing results, it is erroneous to lay the blame on ‘’the system’’. Instead, we should look at the national characteristics: selfishness, greed, insatiable personal expectations as payback for loyalty to a party. This, however, blocks completely the way forward. And it is not at all difficult to connect these characteristics with the results and consequences of the electoral system.

So, where do Fsadni’s thoughts leave us? Accept the system? Not quite. He does suggest an important step forward: the introduction of a national quota, which provides some chance for small parties to win seats in parliament. This provision would require relatively small changes in electoral procedures and would definitely make the system more democratic.

But who can bring about such a change? At present, only the current coterie of MPs – a group that has always viewed the introduction of a national seat quota as a major threat to their hegemony – is in a position to do so. So, this proposition too leads straight to an impasse.

Over the last decades, the LPNP consortium’s main interest has been that of ensuring for themselves alternating periods in government, while minimising, nay, making it impossible, for third parties to ever get anywhere near obtaining parliamentary seats.

However, after 2013, with the sequence of three massive Labour Party victories, “alternating” governments seem to have been wiped off the map indefinitely. Now, the Labour Party is certainly uninterested in changes to the system, and the Nationalist Party has failed to make up for its part in landing us in this straitjacket of a system.

Is it now too late? Will the Nationalist Party allow the burial in an unmarked grave of the president’s “constitutional discussion group”, which had electoral system reform on its agenda, to be the final word?

Joseph Agius – St Paul’s Bay