Nationalist MP Clyde Puli warned Parliament on Wednesday that it would become irrelevant unless MPs got together to push through reform.

Speaking during a debate on electoral boundaries, Puli, a former general secretary of the Nationalist Party, said a holistic reform which went far beyond electoral boundaries was needed so that parliament could remain relevant in people’s eyes. 

He said that he agreed with previous speakers, notably minister Owen Bonnici, that Malta’s electoral system was better than that of many other countries but needed to be tweaked.  

One of the gems of the electoral system in Malta, he said, was the single transferable vote. The people did not vote directly for a political party. They voted for candidates. Indeed, they could vote for all candidates of all political parties.

Having MPs, and consequently, ministers, elected directly by the people was something which should continue to be treasured, not least because it imposed a check on the power of the political parties.

The exception of having MPs appointed to the House by co-option should never become the norm because one should not have a situation where people chose one way and a political party decided in another, and had its way.

Parliament's struggle to remain relevant

Unfortunately, Puli said, parliament, the highest institution of the land, was heading for irrelevance, for various reasons.

The first was the increasingly globalised environment, with national parliaments ceding power to institutions such as the European Commission, and the European Parliament, but also in a local context, even to local councils. 

Secondly, the real political debate was not taking place in parliament, but on the media. Announcements were not made in parliament but on Twitter or Facebook.

MPs were discussing issues after they would have been discussed by everybody else.

But the reform also needed to take in other factors, such as state broadcasting and the need for state funding of political parties to help them maintain their independence. 

A part-time parliament is not enough

And one could not expect real, effective parliamentary scrutiny of the executive from a part-time and under-resourced parliament, Puli insisted. 

Most MPs had to juggle their political duties with their ordinary jobs when parliamentary duties were themselves a full-time job.

The situation was even more difficult for women, most of whom had a job and many of whom ended up also managing their families, thus leaving them no time for a political career. It was this situation which was keeping women away from politics. The electorate itself had no problem in electing women, as the European Parliament elections showed. 

Need for fixed electoral boundaries

Focusing on the electoral boundaries, Puli observed that the Electoral Commission had issued a report proposing some changes, and some members of the commission issued their own minority report proposing other changes.

The changes were being proposed because of the constitutional requirement for the population size of the districts in Malta to be more or less equal.

He disagreed with both reports in principle, Puli said, because the system was wrong. 

What Malta needed was fixed electoral boundaries based on the electorate, not mathematical formulae. 

For how long was Malta going to have a situation where some localities shifted from one district to another every few years, or were even split between two districts? This was unfair on candidates and on the electorate, undermining the bond which should exist between the two.

His suggestion was that the districts should be re-drawn once and for all, on the basis of historical, social and cultural links between the various towns and villages. If some districts ended up being bigger than the others, they should then be able to return more candidates to the House. It would not be something new. In the local government system, for example, the bigger localities elected more candidates than the smaller ones.

Malta already had one district that had fixed boundaries independently of its population size – Gozo. The same could happen Malta, and the number of districts could also be reduced. 

Ridiculous situation caused by alphabetical listing of candidates

Another issue which needed to be tackled, Puli said, was how candidates were listed alphabetically on the ballot paper. As a result, a large percentage of Malta’s MPs had surnames which were higher up in the alphabet.

And Malta was getting to the ridiculous situation where candidates were ending up choosing their surnames (such as by taking their partner's) to be higher up the ballot paper. Other systems existed to mix up the names, even though he feared that the Abelas of the House would not like it, Puli said.

The Zammits would, he concluded.