The final list of general election candidates has been published. It makes for interesting reading and highlights some of the results we should look for after the votes are counted. 

One factoid to start with. It’s been reported that the Nationalist Party (PN), with 70 candidates, has one more than Labour’s 69. But that difference of one is down to a woman. Both the PN and Labour have 53 male candidates but the PN has attracted 17 women to Labour’s 16.

Does that matter? Yes, because the number of women in parliament has as much of a bearing on the stability of our politics as the unity, or disunity, of the major political parties.

Consider the women who were elected in 2017 but won’t be contesting this time. Kristy Debono (PN) and Justyne Caruana (PL) were effectively forced out. The gambles of Marlene

Farrugia (PD) went wrong.

Helena Dalli (PL) resigned to become European commissioner and Marthese Portelli (PN) to take up senior roles in the private sector (she’s now the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, concurrently with a woman president, Marisa Xuereb).

Therese Comodini Cachia, a principled politician rather than a deal-maker, leaves in what looks like disgust at what she’s seen of both sides of the parliamentary divide.

Four of those six names are leaders’ names. There’s a bigger probability that you’ve heard them than that you know some of the names on either side’s frontbench. And the reason that you’ve heard of them is that, whether you like what they did or not (and I’ve been critical of a couple of them), what they did shook things up.

Some of them jumped, others were pushed. Does the nature of Maltese politics have anything to do with it? And do we blame the voters or their fellow politicians?

The list of candidates shows we shouldn’t begin by blaming the voters. For each party, women candidates make up less than a quarter of the total list. Together, they make up half the available seats in parliament. All of them need to be elected to have a fair representation of the sexes in parliament.

Labour’s organised drive, under Miriam Dalli, to increase its number of women candidates led to a grand increase of five, up from 11 last time. In 2017, however, Labour women had a one in three chance of being elected. That was lower than their fellow Labour men’s chances but higher than a Nationalist male candidate’s (which was one in four).

Internal geographical and cultural differences were not the significant factors in determining electoral success. Labour women were elected from Labour strongholds, Nationalist women from PN bases. What made the difference was having differential access to a political machine – whether it was exposure on party media, or a long-standing family involvement in politics, or having been mayor of a large town.

While the political parties extol the contributions of women, their machines are to blame for repelling and punishing women they don’t like- Ranier Fsadni

Obviously, however, to elect women you need a choice. In 2017, the PN got trounced but it still elected half as many more women (six) than Labour (four). It helped that it had 28 women on its lists (when combined with PD’s candidates).

So does society have nothing to do with it? Not quite. I’m saying that the evidence suggests there is no mysterious gap between how Maltese voters behave at general elections in contrast to how they vote in local council and European elections, where women candidates often do well (indeed, at one point, 60 per cent of our MEPs were women).

There is one important difference, however. The party-owned propaganda outlets deal harshly with the politicians who are the targets of the day. There is no gender discrimination with how they deal with male targets as distinct to how they deal with women. But I don’t exclude that a harsh, unrelenting focus on a politician has greater repercussions on women.

I’ve heard more about Comodini Cachia’s scolding voice than I’ve ever heard about Edward Scicluna’s stutters, Edward Zammit Lewis’s pomposity, Robert Abela’s midnight sermon histrionics or Bernard Grech’s parish priest’s manner.

While she was in politics, I heard more about Portelli’s eyebrows than I did about George Vella’s. I heard more about the dress sense of Debono and Rosianne Cutajar than I did about those fashion plates, Joe Mizzi and José Herrera.

And, though it was decades ago, I kept being reminded of Dalli having been Miss Malta and Claudette Buttigieg and Lynn Fauré (a former Labour candidate) having been Eurovision contestants – always as criticism. I’ve heard of Abela having been a body builder but sometimes as praise.

Such depictions are sexist; they thrive on social prejudice but they’re driven by partisan propaganda on both the official partisan media and the unofficial Rottweiler packs dwelling on social media.

Can it be a coincidence that, while what Caruana did was absolutely wrong, when she awarded a contract to a special friend, she was the only one who had to resign, even though there’s public evidence that other cabinet members have behaved in similar ways?

Could it be that scandal (to be clear, justified scandal) stuck to her in ways it doesn’t stick to a man? Or that the media’s eye was glued on her in ways it should have scrutinised her male colleagues but didn’t?

I’m not sure of the answer. I do know that, while the political parties extol the contributions of women, their machines are to blame for repelling and punishing women they don’t like.

Not all political stability is good. Sometimes, you just have to shake the box.