Majority rule is a cornerstone of democracy. When that is not allowed to happen, a country is thrown into chaos and political instability reigns supreme. The constitutional crisis that Malta lived through in the early 1980s is a stark example.
The 1981 general election had yielded a result that many politicians deemed ‘perverse’. The Nationalist Party won the highest number of popular votes but failed to obtain the majority of seats in parliament.
It did not take it lying down. The PN boycotted parliament and eventually launched a campaign of passive resistance and civil disobedience. The country ended up in turmoil. It took six long years of unrest, accentuated by political violence, until a majority rule clause was inserted into the constitution, thanks to the PN’s tenacity in fighting for a fundamental democratic principle.
It was unheard that a party winning the absolute majority of the popular vote should be denied the right to govern. It is logical that the government is formed by the party with the largest number of MPs because the presumption is – as no doubt the drafters of the constitution intended – that on the basis of the accumulation of popular votes won, they would represent the majority of the electorate. Gerrymandering of the electoral boundaries had corrupted the system.
The PN won its hard-fought battle for truth and the majority-rule principle even if it required two constitutional amendments to address the situation in a bid to avoid a repeat of that ‘perverse’ result.
Fast forward almost four decades and a similar situation has been brought about, this time not by a power-hungry Labour Party but by a hard-headed leader of the same PN. Adrian Delia’s ill-conceived stand, that he should remain leader of the opposition because he was elected by party members even though he has now lost the support of the majority of PN MPs, is supported by President George Vella’s decision. His legal advisers seem to share Delia’s warped idea of popular support.
His party’s executive committee has since backed the position taken by the parliamentary group and also declared it no longer has confidence in him. The party’s general council will be convening in a few days’ time to decide whether party members should be asked to confirm Delia as leader or hold a leadership election.
Council members would do well to cast an eye back to the PN’s hard-won victory of the past. Just as the constitution then presumed that the party with the majority of MPs would have won the highest number of popular votes, it now assumes that a leader of the opposition commands the support of the majority of those within his or her own parliamentary group. Just as a government must be backed by the majority vote represented by MPs, it is from the majority of a group of MPs that an opposition leader derives legitimacy.
When the president decided that the office of leader of the opposition was not vacant, even after assuring himself that most of the PN deputies no longer have confidence in Delia, he not only threw out of the window the principle of majority representation but, knowingly or unknowingly, made it more possible for Labour to elect at least two-thirds of MPs in the next election.
The writing is on the wall for the general council: Delia’s position as party leader is untenable. This in terms of the PN’s viability going forward, the need to have a numerically strong and united opposition, and ultimately because of the way our democracy should work.