Renee R MacEwen  03/06/2008 01:00:05 PM  From  DB/Inbox:  Valletta 
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C O N F I D E N T I A L        VALLETTA 00044

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    ACTION: DAO
    INFO:   EXO RAO POL

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APPROVED: DCM:JDAVIS
DRAFTED: POL:MCUMMINGS
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RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 1361

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 VALLETTA 000044 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/WE 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/04/2018 
TAGS: MT NATO PGOV PREL PSI
SUBJECT: MALTA TO HOLD GENERAL ELECTIONS MARCH 8 
 
REF: 07 VALLETTA 00416 
 
Classified By: PolOff MCummings for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) 
 
 ¶1. (C) Summary.  Maltese Prime Minister Gonzi today 
(February 4) dissolved Parliament, and President Fenech-Adami 
called for national elections to be held on March 8. With 
elections required by August and expected by Easter, the two 
dominant parties -- the ruling Nationalist Party (NP) and 
opposition Malta Labor Party (MLP) -- had been in full-swing 
election mode since the beginning of the year. The margin of 
victory in 2003 was under 2,000 votes, and the outcome for 
the upcoming elections could be similarly close; both 
government and opposition officials have expressed cautious 
optimism to Embassy officers at their prospects, with the 
opposition MLP showing particular excitement at the 
possibility of a return to power after being out of 
government for all but two of the last twenty years.  A 
victory by the opposition in this EU member state would 
impact U.S. interests in several ways, including by reducing 
possibilities for multilateral security cooperation. A 
detailed discussion of what the elections might mean for U.S. 
interests and a primer on the somewhat arcane Maltese 
electoral system are presented below.  End summary. 
 
SETTING THE SCENE 
 
¶2. (U) Malta is gearing up for its first general elections 
since joining the European Union.  Elections were required by 
August 2008, as Parliament,s term cannot exceed five years 
and the most recent elections were in 2003.  The timing of 
the elections has been a matter of much debate locally; with 
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi's announcement today that 
question, at least, has been resolved. This will be the first 
time for Gonzi to lead his ruling Nationalist Party into 
elections, as he was elected leader of the Party after the 
last elections, when the former Prime Minister Edward 
Fenech-Adami stepped aside to become President.  Apart from a 
brief interlude in 1996-98, the Nationalist Party has been in 
Government since 1987. 
 
¶3. (SBU) Two parties - the Nationalist Party (NP) and the 
Malta Labor Party (MLP) - have dominated Malta,s politics 
since Malta gained independence in 1964.  Third parties have 
failed to score any electoral success, though the Green Party 
was established in 1989 and remains active. Last year Josie 
Muscat, a popular former Nationalist MP, established his own 
political party, National Action (AN); the party has a 
conservative platform and is clearly hoping to tap into 
anti-immigrant sentiments that are widespread in Malta. 
 
¶4. (SBU) The Maltese electorate tends to turn out in droves - 
over 96 percent of the population voted in the last election. 
 Most Maltese strongly identify with either the Labor or 
Nationalist parties.  It is commonly said that Maltese are 
born into and die belonging to the same political party.  The 
margin of swing voters is thought to be around 10,000; while 
a majority of those voters favored the Nationalists in 1998 
and 2003, they appear to be disenchanted with the Nationalist 
Government this time around. In 1998, the Nationalist's 
margin of victory was close to 13,000 votes; by 2003 it had 
dwindled to under 2,000 votes. 
 
WHAT'S AT STAKE FOR THE U.S.? 
----------------------------- 
 
¶5. (C) Historically, U.S. relations with the MLP have been 
troubled.  Under the leadership of former Prime Minister Dom 
Mintoff, who cultivated strong economic ties with Libya in 
the 1970s, Malta joined the Non-Aligned Movement.  More 
recently (in 1996), a newly-elected Labor government under 
Alfred Sant withdrew from Partnership for Peace (PfP) within 
24 hours of Labor coming to power. (The withdrawal was part 
of a campaign pledge to uphold the constitutional requirement 
for Maltese neutrality.)  By contrast, cooperation with the 
current government has been excellent.  Prime Minister Gonzi 
met with President Bush in September 2005, a meeting that 
launched a series of bilateral agreements including the 
Proliferation Security Initiative Ship-Boarding Agreement 
(SBA), which entered into force in December 2007; as well as 
an Extradition Treaty and a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. 
 
¶6. (C) With Malta now in the EU, the Eurozone and Schengen, 
and with virtually no daylight between the parties on the 
high-profile immigration issue, foreign policy differences 
between the parties are now minimal, and the Embassy has warm 
relations at multiple levels with officials from both 
parties.  In the current campaign the parties are focused on 
local issues such as social spending on health care, 
education, and issues of management and corruption.  With the 
campaign less focused on large policy matters, the 
personalities of leaders within the parties and fatigue with 
the old guard of the ruling Nationalists are expected to play 
a large role in the campaign. 
 
¶7. (C) For the U.S., however, there are real issues at stake. 
The greatest impact of a Labor victory would be with regard 
to Malta's willingness to support multi-lateral security 
efforts: Prime Minister Gonzi told the Ambassador January 31 
that Malta would rejoin PfP if the Nationalist Party wins the 
elections, whereas Labor remains adamantly opposed. (After 
having to reverse stands on major foreign policy questions 
like Malta's joining the European Union and then the 
Eurozone, Sant specifically mentioned opposition to PfP in an 
otherwise vague foreign policy paper issued by the MLP in 
2007.)  Sant has also indicated he would like to see a 
reduction in the visits by U.S. navy ships. A further factor 
appears to us to be general quality of leadership: Labor's 
Sant can be erratic in his decision-making, as when he first 
supported SBA, only to reject it as elections approached (Ref 
A).  In his address to Parliament explaining Labor,s &no8 
vote on the SBA, Labor Spokesman for Foreign Affairs Leo 
Brincat said if Labor won the upcoming elections the Labor 
government would "review" the agreement and its 
implementation on an annual basis. 
 
ELECTION PRIMER: THE DECISION ON TIMING 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶8. (U) The decision to call elections is taken by the Prime 
Minister, who advises the President to dissolve Parliament 
and fix a date for elections. Historically, elections have 
always occurred on the 34th day after Parliament was 
dissolved (in this case March 8) although technically they 
can take place anytime between 33 days and 3 months from the 
date of the dissolution of Parliament. 
 
THE PREPARATION FOR ELECTIONS 
----------------------------- 
 
¶9. (U) Once the Prime Minister calls elections, the President 
dissolves Parliament and puts in place a caretaker government 
to manage the government business until a new government can 
be formed.  The parties then put forward their official list 
of candidates (while the candidates have been campaigning and 
making home visits for months or years, it only becomes 
official at this point.)  While it is rare for new candidates 
to announce themselves at this point in the game, it is not 
uncommon for some candidates or current MPs to decide not to 
contest. 
 
HOW THE PROCESS WORKS 
--------------------- 
 
¶10. (U) The Maltese electoral process is a legacy of the 
British era; it is complicated and arcane, and it is no 
surprise that it takes days for the results to be final. 
There are 13 districts representing around 24,000 citizens, 
with each district electing five candidates. Voting is done 
via a single transferable vote: one vote that is transferable 
per voters, ranked preferences.  Each voter,s vote is 
counted once, the voter ranks their candidates in order of 
preference -- and they are able to rank each candidate on the 
ballot irrespective of party.  The vote only goes to one 
candidate; for a candidate to be elected in the first round 
of votes, they must be ranked as the first-preference 
candidate by one-sixth of the voters in a district.  Once a 
candidate is elected, the votes that candidate receives above 
the quota are inherited by other candidates who were not 
elected in the first round of votes.  Those votes are split 
among the second preference candidates proportionately; the 
votes are then added to the number of first preference votes 
received by each candidate not elected in the first round. 
The system of inheriting votes according to preference 
continues until the district has its slate of MPs. 
 
¶11. (U) Many candidates contest in two districts, which can 
work for or against the candidates.  It spreads the 
candidates thin when they are garnering support by visiting 
their constituents in their homes.  It also gives MPs a 
chance to figure out where their support is strongest )- 
especially when districts are split in the redistricting 
process.  If a candidate is elected in more than one district 
-- something that normally occurs only with the Prime 
Minister, Opposition Leader and a few other strong cabinet 
ministers -- the Party Executive Committee holds a vote to 
decide which district seat the MP will take.  This decision 
is often taken with various political considerations in mind, 
such as strengthening the base in a particular district or 
aiming to secure victory for an ex-minister who was not 
re-elected. For example in 1998, Austin Gatt, now Minister of 
Trade, Investment, Industry and Information Technology, 
received a seat won by former President Guido Demarco.  More 
recently, in the 2003 elections, Louis Galea, MP and Minister 
of Education, won seats in two districts and the Nationalist 
Party Executive Committee voted to have Helen D,Amato take 
his second seat, in order to have stronger female 
representation in the cabinet. 
 
¶12. (U) On the day of voting, polls will be open from 7:00 AM 
to 10:00 PM.  After the polls close, ballots are moved to a 
central location, accompanied by police and officials from 
each party, where they are hand-counted.  Typically, the 
parties will know who has control of parliament by early 
Sunday morning, but the names of elected candidates is not 
known until much later, once all the votes are counted and 
preferences distributed.  After the winning MPs have been 
identified, the party in majority forms its government, a 
process that can take up to two weeks.  With a March 8 
election, a new government can be expected to be in place by 
the end of March. 
 
CHANGING THE RULES OF THE GAME 
------------------------------ 
 
¶13. (U) In 1964, the constitution that was adopted upon 
Malta,s independence created 10 electoral districts with 5 
or 6 seats depending on variance in the population; district 
population was permitted to vary as much as 15 percent from 
the median district, a factor that allowed the process to 
become overly politicized.  This system of districting 
prevailed for 10 years, but was abolished when the Parliament 
passed the republican constitution in 1974.  That 
constitution limited the extent of politicization in drawing 
district lines by creating 13 districts that elect 5 seats 
each, with the population of each district not permitted to 
vary from the median by more than 5 percent. 
 
¶14. (U) In 1981, a close election led to an unusual result 
in which the Labor Party (MLP) won a majority of seats in 
Parliament even though, nationally, the Nationalist Party 
(NP) had won the majority of first-preference votes, which 
are considered to be a vote for the party.  To prevent a 
recurrence of this outcome, the constitution was amended in 
1987 with the proviso that if a party won an absolute 
majority of first-preference votes, then seats would be added 
to Parliament to ensure that the party winning the popular 
vote would have the majority in Parliament.  The 
parliamentary seats added would not represent a particular 
district; and the MPs filling those seats would be decided by 
a vote in the Party Executive Committee.  In 1996, the 
constitution was amended again to ensure that a party winning 
even a relative majority, for example winning 49 percent of 
the vote when the other main party wins 47 percent of the 
vote, would likewise capture the majority of seats in 
parliament. 
 
¶15. (U) More constitutional amendments were approved just 
last year, in September 2007.  The new changes ensured that 
the outlying island of Gozo would be considered a single 
district for electoral boundaries, even though its population 
(at around 31,000) is significantly larger than other 
electoral districts.  The 2007 amendments also provide that 
when candidates from only two political parties are elected 
to parliament but one party is under-represented, that party 
will be credited with extra seats in Parliament to reflect 
its percentage of first-preference votes.  And in the event 
that candidates from more than two parties are elected and 
one of the parties has an absolute majority (over 50 percent 
of the total vote) but is under-represented, that party will 
be credited with extra seats to reflect its votes.  In any 
event, seat allocation for the parties will be based on the 
first-preference vote count and the number of seats in 
Parliament will remain an odd number. If these changes had 
been in place in for the 1998 and 2003 elections, the ruling 
Nationalist Party would have won a three seat majority rather 
than a five seat majority, according to MLP Deputy Leader 
Michael Falzon. 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶16. (C) Unlike the last election, which coincided with a 
referendum on Malta,s entry into the European Union that was 
opposed by Labor, there is no single overarching issue in 
this election.  With no dominant issue, Labor is focusing on 
corruption and management issues, and fatigue  with the 
current government is taking its toll.  A poll released on 
February 3 attributed a lead of six points to the opposition 
Labor Party; in that poll, 43 percent  described themselves 
as undecided.  (Some are attributing Labor's upward movement 
in the polls to a sympathy vote for Sant -- the Labor leader 
was recently diagnosed with colon cancer and is undergoing 
treatment.) In any event, given the extremely narrow margins 
with which Maltese elections are traditionally decided, 
predicting the outcome of the race is not possible. 
 
BORDONARO 
BORDONARO