Prate about democracy

Somehow, when the discussion focuses on the reshaping of constituencies and on the electoral process, it is impossible to avoid references to history. Each side of the political divide latches on to the arbitrary methods it claims were used against it in the past, ignoring what it could have been held responsible for over the same period.

The PN are masters at this game. They still try to make mileage out of the electoral result of 1981, which gave them a minority of parliamentary seats for a majority of the popular vote. They ignore what happened during the 1960s, when the electoral process was distorted by corrupt practices, or in 1971, when a scandalous gerrymandering of boundaries failed to deliver a majority of seats in Parliament to the PN, by a fluke.

Today's voters are justified in exclaiming: What the heck, that happened so long ago; what we are interested in is what is happening right now.

And the argument now is, or should be: What is the best system which guarantees that parliamentary democracy in Malta really reflects the vote of the people? Gerrymandering of district boundaries and associated procedures happen across the spectrum of Western democracies. It certainly does not make sense for us to criticise, or take comfort from, what happens in the Mid-West of the US, in British rural seats, or in the Bavarian countryside. What others do is theirs to judge according to the norms of their democracy. What we do, we ourselves must judge in terms of what we want to achieve, with fairness and the national interest in mind. Certainly, it makes sense for a small island state like Malta to try and achieve the best fit possible between the proportion of votes obtained nationally by the political parties and the proportion of parliamentary seats secured by parties.

No party has a monopoly over political sanctity such as the PN claims for itself. These claims were repeated when the governing party reacted to the new constituency boundaries drawn up by the Electoral Commission. Boundaries now have to be adjusted once again, since the existing constituencies have outgrown the parameters of size set for them by the Constitution. In terms of Maltese politics, this is the moment when gerrymandering can "best" come into play.

People who know how things have been organised in past years understand too that the PN can claim no sanctity on this score. Yes, we have to go back to recent history. In 1987, the PN again got an absolute majority of some 4,000 votes nationwide but a minority of seats in Parliament; it would have remained in opposition without a constitutional amendment introduced by the then Labour government to ensure that whoever got the absolute majority of votes would have at least a majority of one seat in the Parliament. The PN were the first beneficiaries of this rule.

In the elections of 1996, 1998 and 2003, with constituency boundaries drawn up under the aegis of a PN government, Labour got seats in Parliament that proportionately were well under the proportion of votes it obtained in the country at large, both as a majority and as a minority. In 1996, the same electoral result was obtained as in 1981 and in 1987: with the majority of votes in the country, Labour still landed a minority of seats in Parliament. Only the majority it then had was close to 8,000; in the previous two cases (1981 and 1987), the PN's majority was of around 4,000. So much for those who prate about democracy. Again, in 1998 and 2003, the constituency boundaries approved by the PN gave the PN proportionately more seats than justified by the proportion of the popular vote they got.

The PN was warned about the consequences of what was going on. They still proceeded after the electoral outcomes confirmed that constituencies had been unfairly drawn up. It is only now, after the redrawing of new boundaries, that the Prime Minister and his henchmen are crying foul. They are doing so because the Electoral Commission has for once come up with a redistricting that might, just might, deliver a better fit than ever between the proportion of votes cast and parliamentary seats.

Now all this could be avoided if changes are made in the system which ensure that the proportion of votes obtained by any party translates into the same proportion of seats. In the mid-1990s a commission chaired by Lawrence Gonzi, then Speaker of the House, tried to come up with a solution. PN spokesmen have argued that that commission's work was vitiated by Labour refusing to discuss voting thresholds at national level which would allow parties representation in Parliament. Not true. What Labour held out for, and what was never envisaged in the Gonzi commission, was a straight commitment that proportionality of seats be guaranteed on the basis of first count votes.

Once that point is taken on board, it follows almost naturally, that a national threshold would have to apply. But for years, the PN refused to follow that route and accept that proportionality should be set on the electorate's first count votes.

They preferred to lobby for gerrymandered boundaries. Five years ago, the Fenech Adami/Gonzi administration turned down flat a plea by the Labour opposition for the boundaries that were then drawn by the Electoral Commission to be reconsidered. Now the Prime Minister and his henchmen apparently plan to use their parliamentary majority to bludgeon a new report through the Electoral Commission that would be favourable to their partisan interests, as they see them.

This is shameful.