EPaper

A deep and meaningful analysis of the system and the outcome

Malta’s Hybrid Electoral System

IVAN MIFSUD

Author: Austin Bencini Publishers: Kite Group Year: 2022 Pages: 312

This second edition of what is undoubtedly Malta’s leading literary work on the electoral system, merits considerable praise for a number of reasons. For starters, Austin Bencini has devised a simple solution to a perennial difficulty: how to update one’s work in a timely manner, the more so when one is covering such a fluid topic: this is done by designing one’s work in such a way that its contents remain valid and do not require much tweaking, with later developments being covered in new additional chapters. Simple and yet extremely effective, provided one gets each chapter right the first time, as Bencini has in fact done. Once the “foundations” are solid, one can build as many further storeys as one likes, with little difficulty and in record time. And record time it is, because Bencini actually succeeded in concluding

his observation, analysis and writing hardly a month after the 2022 general elections actually took place.

We are now enriched, in this second edition, with a deep and meaningful analysis of the latest developments in Malta’s centuryold electoral system, a system which, initially, some were sceptical about but which withstood the test of time as it passed certain landmarks such as the extension to women of the right to vote and the election to Parliament of the first woman in 1947, to corrections aimed at avoiding a repeat of certain anomalies in the 1980s, and now the latest phenomenon: the move from “correction” to “modification”.

In 2022 Malta marked its first “gender-balanced” elections, as a result of which we moved from correcting an electoral result to reflect better the will of the electorate, to actually altering an election result in order to accommodate what some view as a necessary evil if we are to achieve greater parity between the sexes, while others have labelled the gender balance mechanism as an undemocratic tampering with the

will of the people.

Bencini refers to this, and more, he is critical of the manner in which this brand new constitutional provision was misapplied, ironically by a female candidate in the process depriving another woman of a seat in Parliament. As is to be expected from an academic of this calibre, Bencini does not restrict himself to criticising but also offers solutions, not only to how this female candidate should have acted and what the consequences of her choices should have been, but also on how better to reach closer parity between genders.

Very aptly, Bencini asks whether corrective and gender mechanisms have “reached their outermost limits”. This may, or may not be so: Bencini himself had suggested the need for another corrective mechanism, this being such as to cater for the eventuality of a third party making it into Parliament, a scenario, which Professor Kevin Aquilina described in his foreword to the first edition, as a constitutional crisis in the waiting.

At this stage, I take the liberty to suggest another corrective mechanism which I have recently discussed with Austin himself: the introduction of a mechanism which would be triggered if one single political party had to win more than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, which mechanism would grant enough seats to the other party (or parties) as to reduce the majority party’s number of seats to below the two-thirds, thus ensuring that the Constitution – our Constitution which has served us so well for close to 60 years – remains stronger than any single political force. Perhaps our corrective and gender mechanisms have not yet reached their outermost limits yet, be this as it may there is no doubt the electoral system will continue to evolve and history will be made whether at the polls or in the courtroom. It follows that this monograph is only momentarily complete and in future we can look forward to more of Bencini’s insights into the Maltese electoral system while this monograph will continue to go from strength to strength.

Copies of the book available from leading bookstores or www.kitegroup.com.mt

Ivan Mifsud is Dean Faculty of Laws

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2022-05-15T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-15T07:00:00.0000000Z

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