The ADPD will be going to court to challenge a law on better gender representation in parliament, approved by MPs a few days ago.

It will also challenge the mechanism, introduced several years ago, to ensure that parties are represented in parliament according to the number of seats their candidates get.

The small political party said that while it agreed with the principle behind both mechanisms, it disagreed with the way how they could only come into play if only two parties win seats in the House.

This, it argues, is discriminatory in favour of the big parties.

Party leader Carmel Cacopardo in a statement said that it was unacceptable that the law was not equal for everyone.

“We will challenge these two anti-democratic and discriminatory mechanisms in the courts,” he said.

“It is unacceptable that the law is not equal for everyone: this is supposed to be a basic democratic principle underpinning all legislation.” 

The law on gender representation in parliament introduces a corrective mechanism to ensure gender parity if no more than two parties are elected to parliament. 

When one gender is represented by less than 40% of all seats in the House after a general election, a maximum of 12 additional candidates – six from either party, will be declared elected.

ADPD said it will ask the Constitutional court to declare the mechanism “discriminatory” since it can only be applied if no more than two parties are represented in parliament. 

During public consultation on the reform, ADPD had said that while agreeing, in principle, with the need to introduce a corrective electoral mechanism to restore gender balance, the law should be applicable to everyone and should not discriminate between women and parties.

This also meant that the corrective mechanism on proportionality in the electoral result, which is also restricted in its application to a Parliament composed of only two political parties, needed to be addressed.

Cacopardo said that the technical committee for strengthening democracy, appointed by the government to draw up the proposals and coordinate public consultation, did not even bother to talk to ADPD about its proposals.

The electoral system “discriminates against us” and makes it increasingly difficult for a small party to achieve parliamentary representation and be in a better position to advance its ideas and ideals, he said.

Laws specifically designed to favour "the PLPN cabal" are “purposely and unashamedly” strengthening the dominance of the two parties by trying to eliminate others from the political scene through discriminatory measures.

This “tailor-made fiddling” with the electoral law is “compounding the discrimination we suffer” and is “the last straw," he said.