Although not enough, great progress has been achieved in the advancement of equality for women. After years of  neglect, succeeding Dom Mintoff, Eddie Fenech Adami brought significant progress with the fundamental establishment of the right to a joint, husband and wife, administration of matrimonial property and the assignment of the legal custody of children jointly to the husband and the wife.

Currently, more than legal, economic and social interventions are required in favour of women.

The objective should be that of creating de facto equality in access to opportunities to participate fully in any sphere of life and society, be it family, employment, career, business or politics.

So for more women to achieve a seat in parliament, it is correct to give females positive discriminatory help, like paid campaigning time off, lump sums to finance a campaign and, as Graffitti have validly suggested, oblige political parties to present an electoral list with a minimum number of female candidates. This is the way forward and not legislation that arbitrarily creates 12 female gender-reserved additional parliamentary seats.    

Unfortunately, the focus is nowadays shifting from the creation of equal opportunities to one of female gender quotas imposition.

It is acceptable, in respect of physically or mentally disadvantaged persons, to interpret ‘positive discrimination’ as meaning reserved quotas, however, it is offensive and not right to do the same in respect of intelligent and able-bodied women. Such women should not take advantage and hitch a ride with the really deserving physically or mentally disadvantaged members of society.

We are seeing an effort by the Labour administration to falsely sell, as a legitimate equality measure, mandatory parliamentary gender quotas. Apart from being demeaning to women, such a measure will gravely deny the constitutional right of electors, through majority voting, to freely select their parliamentary representatives.

Furthermore, quotas will deny the right of a male election candidate to a parliamentary seat as he would have obtained more vote preferences than a ‘quota’ female appointee.

The proposal erroneously equates an imposed parliamentary gender balance with equality in politics. Politics is a participatory dynamic activity and,  while it is sensible to encourage and enable equal participation by all genders, it is not sensible and legitimate to impose a predetermined result on what should be a free and unpredictable election outcome. This also makes nonsense of a constitutionally established parliamentary representation based on the right to freely vote to choose who will represent you, irrespective of gender.

Mandatory gender balance is not equality in politics- Arthur Muscat

Labour’s parliamentary female gender quotas proposal is a very shallow quick fix. Basically, it implies an overnight mandatory obligation towards a minimum 40 per cent female parliamentary membership. This preposterous proposal is based on such dubious constitutional ground that it inevitably raises a need for interventions on our constitution. In fact, the proposal is officially described as “an Act to amend the Constitution of Malta and other laws to ensure de facto equality between men and women in politics”. Mandatory gender balance is not equality in politics.

It is incredible how casually our leaders take to legislate on whatever takes their fancy and, when they hit against the supreme protection of our constitution, they do not take a step back but arrogantly proceed to resort to ad hoc amendments to compel our constitution to come in line with their sly objectives.

There seems to be no respect as our constitution is made subservient to particular biased party interests which include vote harvesting.

Are there hidden agendas behind this shrewd ‘Joseph Muscat era’ Labour proposal? As drafted, this proposal includes a very astonishing proviso which implies that, if in an election a third “party” manages to elect members, then the provisions of this law will not come into force! What does this mean?

It seems to mean that Labour is sending a not so ‘subliminal’ message to electors, who may be in favour of an overnight gender-balanced parliament, to just vote Labour and Nationalist candidates and avoid voting for third party candidates.

It must be pointed out that some very anomalous situations may arise should a third party not make it to parliament and the provisions of this bill come into force.

Not in theory, but in practice, a third party may see 12 of its candidates, in 12 districts, collectively obtaining 18,000 votes without one candidate being elected. Should this happen, we will helplessly watch the PL/PN tandem share a booty of 12 extra female MPs!

These extra female members will probably have inferior credentials, in terms of votes, than so many candidates who will be left out in the cold.

In this piece of fudging, again, I cannot help but see the usual mischievous and cunning Labour.

As it infringes our constitution, this ‘avant-garde’, female-friendly, Labour proposal, nowhere in existence in the EU, requires a two-thirds parliamentary approval vote.

Once more, taken by surprise, how is the PN going to react? In favour or against?

This seems to be the proverbial ‘political correctness’ trap and whoever intends to oppose this extremely flawed proposal must react intelligently with valid arguments.

If I may paraphrase MEP Alfred Sant, this is nothing but “... a little bit of fudging here and a little bit of fudging there”, unfortunately, this fudging will certainly corrupt the integrity of our constitution.

Arthur Muscat, human resources and industrial relations specialist.