From the online comments

Gender quota is making a travesty of democracy, Arnold Cassola insists

I don’t know if Arnold Cassola has his arithmetic reasoning correct but I fully agree, along with a huge chunk of the population, that this gender mechanism of getting elected to parliament is a farce and will decrease the high social and political standard of the Maltese parliament. Parliament will be filled with MPs the party chooses not what the people choose. – Omar Camilleri

The quota system not only patronises women but makes a mockery of the democratic right of citizens to chose their own representatives in parliament. – D. Galea

Personally, I do not agree with this new mechanism. If we females cannot get elected on our own steam, we shouldn’t be representing the people who did not vote for us. I also feel that an age capping should be put in place – 25 to 60 years. Just my opinion. – Therese Bamber

What a farce! The Maltese politicians’ characteristic of making a mess out of everything, the end result being ridicule. – Joe Tedesco

Arnold Cassola

I agree with Arnold Cassola in protesting that the ‘gender quota is making a travesty of democracy’... but not only for the ‘limited’ reasons he rightly pointed out. In principle, this undemocratic PNPL perverse gender quota mechanism defies and undermines the very essence of the basic concept of the democratic representative electoral process of our country, as we now have unelected and, consequently, co-opted members of parliament who do not enjoy the electorate’s support and trust and/or, worse, have been ‘rejected’ by the electorate.

Adding insult to injury, the PN candidate Janice Chetcuti undermined/ abused/made mockery of this ‘gender equality mechanism’ for self-confessed party partisan interests, as against better female participation in parliament, thus denying yet again another opportunity for more females to be co-opted to parliament.

Having said this, regrettably Cassola ought to have known better as he had agreed in principle with ‘gender quotas’ but only disagreed with the then PNPL proposed self-centred/exclusive gender quota mechanism. The end result is that the PNPL have subjected our country to a democratic deficit. – Joe Morana

I never agreed with Cassola on anything but on this I’m 100 per cent with him. This so-called gender quota mechanism is ridiculous, unneeded and, above all, totally and seriously undemocratic, not to mention the fact that now we have a ridiculously large parliament for the size of our population, thus also being a burden on public coffers. How on earth one can put a person in parliament (man or woman it’s doesn’t matter) when same was not elected by the citizens?

This is pure dictatorship. And before anyone accuses me of being a PN sympathiser, I can assure you that I’m anything but a Nationalist. This madness has to be reversed asap.

The voters had the chance to elect women to parliament but for unknown reasons they didn’t, so be it. Full stop. The people’s verdict is supreme, sovereign and untouchable and no one has the right to touch it. – Robert Debono

This is the most absurd mechanism I’ve ever seen (sure I will see worse in the future). It is a mockery to democracy... but does democracy really exist? So why hold the elections? Better to run an election where people vote for party leaders only and then they will choose parliamentary members. This system simply goes against what voters wanted.

If voting is done for party leaders only then there is no need for electoral districts and, thus, it also gives the opportunity to other parties to get elected to parliament (but, obviously,  this is not in the interest of the so-called democracy). – Christopher Vidal

If people don’t vote for a woman then find out why and address it. Overriding the whole process of voter choice and just picking women as MPs under the guise of wanting proportionality is not logical. – John Borg