The 1987 Maltese election : between Europe and the Mediterranean

Abstract

On 9 May 1987 Malta returned to power the (conservative) Nationalist Party, ending 16 years of uninterrupted rule by the Malta Labour Party. As in previous elections in this two-party system, the turnout was very high and the result extremely close. The vote was practically identical to that of the previous election of 1981, with a record 96.1 per cent of the electorate voting. The Nationalist Party won by a majority of 2.04 per cent, which is translated into a majority of one in the enlarged 69-seat Parliament. In the 1981 election despite the Nationalists' vote of 50.92 per cent Labour still had a majority of three in a Parliament of 65 members, in what has been termed a perversion of the PR (STY) voting system. However, a constitutional amendment passed in January 1987 by the necessary two-thirds majority in Parliament provided that a party obtaining 50 per cent plus one of the valid votes (but still short of a majority of seats) would be entitled to co-opt sufficient additional members to form a majority. Because the voting pattern remained largely unchanged from the previous election, and Labour was still returned with three seats more than the Nationalists, the Nationalists were entitled to co-opt the four additional members.