Sant's most dangerous of games

Many people who last Sunday woke to the news that Alfred Sant had challenged Eddie Fenech Adami to declare publicly that he would respect the April 12 election result, shrugged off the news as just another weird Sant statement.

After all, this was the same Sant who had refused to respect the result of the 1998 election that he himself had called, dubbing the people's chosen government as an "illegitimate" one. After his obscene - but carefully stage-managed - reaction to the March 8 referendum result, how could Dr Sant have the gall to say he has a "well-founded suspicion" that the PN would not respect the election result and to cast shadows on Dr Fenech Adami's democratic credentials accusing him of inciting people to undermine the MLP because Dr Fenech Adami has his back to the wall?

Contrary to what many might think, this is not the theatre of the absurd. Unfortunately, this is real Maltese politics in the first quarter of the year 2003, on the eve of Malta's accession to the EU. The truth, unpalatable as it may be, is that Dr Sant's statements fit in perfectly in his diabolical strategy to use democratic means to undermine the democratic decision taken by the Maltese people on March 8.

On March 8, 143,094 Maltese voted Yes to Malta's accession to the European Union. What if on April 12, the MLP garners fewer first-preference votes than that but still gets a relative majority of valid votes cast and is democratically elected to power? Fewer voters than those who voted Yes in the referendum would have given the power to Dr Sant to ignore the decision taken by a larger number of voters in favour of Malta to become a EU member. This is, awfully, Dr Sant's most dangerous of games.

Constitutional amendments

Before 1987 nothing in Malta's Constitution prevented the possibility of the "perverse" election result we had in 1981. That this result was the fruit of Labour's labour to gerrymander the electoral divisions is a well-known fact. Yet, it is also true that such a result could have been a mere coincidence.

The Constitutional amendments prior to the 1987 elections provided for the mechanism of adding a number of parliamentary seats so that the political party that obtained an absolute majority of first-preference votes, but a minority of seats, would also have a majority of seats.

The PN always considered the 1987 amendment as a stopgap measure until a better system was found to ensure that the distribution of parliamentary seats reflects as far as possible the distribution of the valid votes that each political party obtains in an election.

In two successive legislatures after the 1987 and 1992 elections, the PN government did its utmost to persuade the MLP on the need of a more radical reform in our electoral system and was prepared to adopt the D'Hondt system for our elections. This system, suggested in a report made by mathematics professor Anton Buhagiar, would have made gerrymandering an impossibility by establishing a national quota and would have made sure that seats are allotted to any small party even if its national quotas are obtained for votes cast in all the electoral divisions.

It was also suggested that for a party to be represented in Parliament it would have to obtain enough votes to surpass a five per cent threshold, in practice equivalent to three seats. These efforts put the democratic credentials of Dr Fenech Adami and of the PN beyond any doubt whatsoever.

However, the MLP, led by Dr Sant, refused this proposal and only agreed with another Constitutional amendment whereby in a scenario where no party gets the absolute majority of votes and only two parties manage to get seats in Parliament, the party obtaining the relative majority would have the right to govern.

Although this scenario has never actually materialised, it is on this amendment that Dr Sant is now pinning all his hopes to win the election and undermine the decision that the Maltese people took on March 8 in the most democratic of manners.

The dreaded scenario

In other words, I am referring to a scenario where the people who have voted Yes in the referendum would split between the PN and AD with some Labour voters returning to Dr Sant's fold, with AD not getting any of its candidates elected and with the MLP getting more first-preference votes than the PN. An example of this result in practical terms would be, say, 49% of valid votes for the MLP with 48% for the PN and 3% for Alternattiva Demokratika.

Much has been made of this possibility in the last few days following the referendum result, with AD chairman Harry Vassallo even emphasising that for the PN to go to the polls without forging an alliance with AD would be "suicidal".

From the strictly legal point of view, so long as the AD retains its identity as a separate political party, an alliance - even if declared beforehand - would still not be one political party and the Constitution speaks only of political parties. It does not refer in any way to alliances, common lists or whatever system that is supported by more than one party. Claiming that a majority made up of two parties forming some sort of alliance has the right to govern according to the Constitution is obviously very slippery legal ground and any move in this direction is the perfect recipe for chaos.

From the practical point of view, I feel that the AD's strength is being overrated. AD's share of the vote has been slowly but steadily declining since its name first appeared on the ballot papers of the 1992 elections. In the last two elections it contested, AD obtained fewer votes than the invalid votes cast - 3,216 against 3,658 in the 1998 general election and 3,029 against 5,130 in this year's local council elections on March 8.

The most recently published opinion survey (The Sunday Times, March 16) indicates that AD have the support of just one per cent of the electorate. That this one per cent of voters would all opt for the PN in an election contested only by the PN and the MLP, is of course, a crass exaggeration.

The only suggestion that I have heard that could - theoretically - solve the problem was for the PN to pick a division where Dr Fenech Adami himself is a candidate and gets an enormous surplus of votes, and "instruct" its voters to give the second preference to an AD candidate. This would ensure that the AD candidate is also elected, thus blocking the corrective mechanism that in the case of a relative majority scenario is subject to only two parties being represented in Parliament.

I think that this "solution" is extremely impractical and is, in fact, too bizarre to be taken seriously, in spite of the mathematical prowess of whoever thought it up. Incidentally, it would also provoke gallons of bad blood between the other PN candidates in the electoral division concerned.

The real solution, of course, should avoid playing any games when the country's future is at stake. The 143,094 who voted for Malta's accession to the EU cannot afford to see this country's aspirations to disappear into thin air. They cannot afford not to vote for a PN candidate.

These last few days many have told me that in their opinion Alfred Sant is mad. I think that those who are really mad are those who, in spite of knowing well the terrible consequences of an MLP victory on April 12, are prepared to take the risk by not giving their first-preference vote to a PN candidate.

Mr Falzon is a former Nationalist MP and minister