Malta and Ireland share the same electoral systems. So why do they have different political cultures? asks HERMANN SCHIAVONE
AS THEY gathered in Waterford last night for their annual convention, Green Party TDs and members were in a self-congratulatory mood for having managed to extract an extra junior ministry from Taoiseach Brian Cowen in his reshuffle. By playing a clever political hand, five of the six Green TDs have now achieved ministerial office in the lifetime of the Coalition.
The Greens argue, with some justice, that an extra Minister with the new responsibilities will give them more political muscle. Ciarán Cuffe with responsibility for planning and sustainable transport reform, among other things, and Mary White with equality and human rights will certainly be in a position to put more of a Green stamp on key areas of policy.
However, the party might do well to ponder how the sharp manoeuvring looks to those outside the political bubble. So far, the public reaction appears to be scorn at what is regarded as a naked “jobs for the boys” play by the Greens, rather than admiration for the way the party managed to pull ministerial rabbits out of the hat.
What was missing from the entire reshuffle, and the Greens’ role in it, was a clear signal from the country’s political leaders that they understand the depth of the pain being suffered by so many ordinary people, particularly those who have lost their jobs or those who can’t find a job.
The roof has caved in on the Irish economy over the past two years and the tough measures required to rescue it are not nearly over. Further stringent spending cuts and tax increases are inevitable in next year’s budget, and the year after that, in order to get the public finances back into some sort of shape.
As if that is not bad enough, billions of euro will have to be spent on the recapitalisation of the Irish banks in the next few weeks. While there may be a reluctant acceptance by the public of the need to rescue AIB and Bank of Ireland, the allocation of vast amounts of money required to keep the formerly delinquent Anglo Irish Bank afloat will inevitably prompt public rage.
In that context the whole reshuffle looks like an exercise in moving deckchairs on the Titanic and the spectacle of the Greens using the opportunity to grab an extra deckchair may only seal the party’s fate come the next election.
Of course the Greens see it differently. The party’s TDs are confident they are on the side of the angels and believe the extra ministerial post will give them an opportunity to implement more of their policies which they are convinced will be good for the country in the long term.
The Greens point to what they believe are significant policy achievements in Government, despite the overwhelming economic problems that have dominated most of its tenure. Reform of the planning process through the Planning Bill, new building regulations, more emphasis on renewable energy, local government reform, the second house tax and the move to water metering are among those achievements, as are the Government commitment to reform the political system and introduce directly elected mayors in major cities beginning with Dublin.
The problem for the party is that the public appears oblivious to the Green role in getting policy implemented, apart from ones that might be unpopular in certain quarters such as the ban on stag hunting or the introduction of water metering. The results of last year’s local elections when the party was all but obliterated showed that the voters seem determined to punish the party for being involved with Fianna Fáil, regardless of what they achieve or don’t achieve in office.
It is a perennial problem for any small party in a coalition to get the public to focus on its policy achievements. During the Labour Party’s involvement in the coalition with Fianna Fáil after the 1992 election party advisers kept a chart on which they ticked off each of their policy achievements arising from the programme for government.
That didn’t make a whit of difference to the public hostility to the party’s decision to go into office with Fianna Fáil. Even the decision to pull out of the coalition and become part of a rainbow government led by Fine Gael didn’t change the public perception. The voters waited in the long grass for five years and the party lost half its seats in 1997.
The Greens are in a much more difficult position than that. Their involvement in the most unpopular government on record since opinion polling began in this country is going to cost them dearly. The party will be extremely lucky if it manages to hold on to half its seats in the next election. The real battle will be to avoid getting wiped out.
The prospect of that happening has encouraged many Fianna Fáil TDs to believe that the Greens will hang in to the bitter end and keep the Coalition on life support until the summer of 2012 come what may. There are a number of problems about that scenario, the biggest one being that it would inevitably mean doom for the Greens.
The fact that Fianna Fáil itself is becoming increasingly unstable as more of the party’s TDs lose confidence in Cowen’s leadership is something the Greens have to weigh very carefully. They have to decide on an exit strategy of their own to give them at least some chance of survival. Having got the extra junior Minister they have to fulfil their side of the bargain by remaining loyal for the foreseeable future, through the banking recapitalisation and even the next budget, but after that the party requires a bold plan for survival, assuming that events don’t bring the whole edifice down in the meantime.
MALTA IS the only other country in the world which uses proportional representation single transferrable vote (PR-STV) to elect its legislative representatives. PR-STV in Malta, like in Ireland, generates intra-party competition and Maltese members of parliament have to compete among themselves to win as many first preferences as possible to secure election. Since members of the same parties cannot compete against each other on matters of policy or ideology they seek to distinguish themselves on other attributes. Their engagement in constituency work is one of them.
Having said that, Maltese MPs tend to spend less time than TDs on constituency- based activities. In this article I will try to point out a number of possible explanations for the discrepancy.
The voting population in Malta is about 300,000, a 10th of Ireland’s, and there is a phenomenon of high turnouts in general elections. The lowest turnout recorded in the last 40 years was 93 per cent, registered two years ago. Since there is no legal obligation for one to cast a vote in Malta, the high turnout is a reflection of genuine high motivation of the electorate. Furthermore, Malta has an almost pure two-party system and support for the Nationalist party and the Labour party was in excess of 98 per cent in the last general election of 2008 and split almost equally.
The Maltese are generally represented in parliament by 65 MPs elected from 13 districts, each returning five MPs. A constitutional provision ensures that national proportionality of first-preference votes won by parties is reflected in the number of seats in parliament if only two parties manage to win seats.
To this effect bonus seats are awarded to parties according to the proportion of first- preference votes received nationally. The provision had to be invoked on a number of occasions and the present parliament is made up of 69 MPs, 35 seats for the governing Nationalists and 34 for the Labour opposition.
My presentation to the Oireachtas committee on the Constitution focused on a number of characteristics in the Maltese system and the political culture, which are different from those found in Ireland. I have also presented some of the results of a survey I conducted with Maltese MPs, at the same time an identical survey was being carried out here with TDs. There are a number of similarities in the two results, such as TDs’ and Maltese MPs’ level of satisfaction with the operation of PR-STV in the two countries.
The results of the survey, however, brought to light a number of divergences between the two sets of representatives.
I cannot discuss them all in detail. Instead, I am going to focus on one aspect; time spent on constituency work by TDs and Maltese MPs (see table).
The results show that TDs spend more than half of their working week on constituency- related work, while Maltese MPs spend a little less than a third of their time on the same activity.
There are a number of possible explanations for this discrepancy and I will point out some of them.
1. Maltese MPs are not full time and most of them have a day job. Their gross remuneration is approximately €18,000 and they cannot claim expenses.
In contrast, TDs’ remuneration is approximately €90,000 plus expenses.
Maltese MPs spend 39 per cent on “other” activities and most of them indicated their profession/job as the “other” activity. This could possibly be one reason why Maltese MPs spend less time on constituency work. They simply cannot live on the parliamentary remuneration and like everyone else have to spend a considerable amount of time earning a living, leaving them with less time to do constituency work.
2. The constituencies in Malta are small and the average quota is between 3,500 and 4,000 votes which is approximately a third of the average Irish quotas. This means that on average, a Maltese MP has a third of the actual number of constituents of a TD.
3. Cross-party voting is negligible in Malta (approx 1.5 per cent). Supporters of the two main parties allocate all the preferences to their preferred party candidates but generally do not allocate lower preferences to other candidates. Because of this, Maltese MPs do not seek lower preferences from the supporters of the opposing party. In turn, generally, supporters of a particular party only approach their respective party’s MPs to seek assistance when they need it.
4. Parties constantly over-nominate in general elections and on average four candidates contest each available seat. Constituency work is not only performed by sitting MPs as potential candidates are expected to do constituency work like their competitor MPs. The workload is therefore shared by MPs and a number of prospective candidates.
5. Up to 1987, the Maltese government controlled the economy and a number of corporations, such as the telephone company, the utilities companies and commercial banks. Since then, Malta’s economy was opened and the government privatised most of its companies and formed new autonomous authorities such as the planning authority which took the power of granting planning permits from the hands of the minister and placed it in the hands of autonomous boards. MPs have little, if any, influence on the operation of these entities and the electorate is aware that, unlike in the pre-1987 era, their representatives have limited power to assist them within these institutions.
6. Local councils were introduced in 1993 and since their introduction they have been entrusted with more responsibilities and local issues are being looked after by local councillors rather than the central government. Since local councillors are more accessible than MPs and closer to the local decision-making centre, citizens generally tend to approach their local councillor instead of the MP on local issues.
Constituency work in Malta is regarded as a very important part of an MP’s work. Those MPs who spend more time on the constituency tend to do better than others at the polls.
It appears, however, that TDs allocate more time to constituency-based activities than their Maltese counterparts. I have pointed out a number of possible explanations for the discrepancy and if I had to highlight the two most important reasons why Maltese MPs spend less time on constituency work, they would be the remuneration of MPs and the relative strong local councils.
The joint committee on the Constitution currently deliberating the electoral system may consider some of the points I mentioned. While I can see the committee suggesting ways to strengthen Irish local councils, I do not expect them to look into their remuneration as a means of reducing TDs’ emphasis on constituency work.
Hermann Schiavone is a doctoral student at the University of Manchester. His thesis is on the PR-STV system and its consequence on Maltese politics. He has been a local councillor for the Nationalist Party of Malta. In February, he gave evidence to the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution