Parliament of Malta Il-Parlament ta' Malta | |
---|---|
14th Legislature | |
Type | |
Type | |
Houses | House of Representatives |
History | |
Founded | 1921 |
Leadership | |
Structure | |
Seats | 79 |
Political groups | Government (43)
Opposition (35)
|
Elections | |
Single transferable vote (not counting members co-opted to fulfill gender quota) | |
Last election | 26 March 2022 |
Next election | 2027 |
Meeting place | |
Parliament House, Valletta | |
Website | |
http://www.parlament.mt/ |
The Parliament of Malta (Maltese : Il-Parlament ta' Malta) is the constitutional legislative body in Malta, located in Valletta. The parliament is unicameral, with a democratically elected House of Representatives and the president of Malta. By constitutional law, all government ministers, including the prime minister, must be members of the House of Representatives.
Between 1921 and 1933 the Parliament was bicameral, consisting of a Senate (Senat) as well as a Legislative Assembly (Assemblea Leġiżlattiva).
The House of Representatives (Maltese : Kamra tad-Deputati) is the unicameral legislature of Malta and a component of the Parliament of Malta. The House is presided over by the Speaker of the House. The President of Malta is appointed for a five-year term by a resolution of the House.
The House is composed of an odd number of members elected for one legislative term of five years. Five members are returned from each of thirteen electoral districts using the single transferable vote electoral system, but additional members are elected in cases of dis-proportionality. Since 2022, 12 extra seats are provided to female candidates, as long as they fail to make up 40% of the elected members, leading to a total of 79 MPs after the 2022 election.
MPs are elected from 13 five-seat constituencies by single transferable vote. [1] Candidates who pass the Hagenbach-Bischoff quota in the first round are elected, and any surplus votes transferred to the remaining candidates, who will be elected if this enables them to pass the quota. [1] The lowest ranked candidates are then eliminated one-by-one with their preferences transferred to other candidates, who are elected as they pass the quotient, until all five seats are filled. [2] If a party wins a majority of first preference votes but fails to achieve a parliamentary majority, they are awarded seats to ensure a one-seat majority, if they are one of only two parties to obtain seats. [2] While the ranked preferential system used is technically proportional, the low number of seats per constituency (five) means that parties can only receive seats if they reach at least 16.7% of votes, [3] so smaller parties are excluded from representation. Consequently, Malta has a stable two-party system, with only the Labour Party and Nationalist Party having a realistic chance of forming a government. [4] [5]
In 2018, the national voting age was lowered to 16. [6] In 2021, a gender-corrective mechanism was introduced, with the new Article 52(A) of the Constitution providing for up to 12 additional seats for unelected candidates from "the under-represented sex" in case one of both makes up less than 40% of the elected MPs. [7] As women have never made up more than ~15% of the elected candidates prior to this mechanism, this effectively leads to 12 extra women (6 from each party) in parliament.
Between 1921 and 2015, the House of Representatives was housed in the Grandmaster's Palace in Valletta. [8] Since 4 May 2015 the House of Representatives has met in the Parliament House, near the city gate of Valletta.
The Standing Orders of the House provide for the creation of eight Parliamentary Standing Committees to make parliamentary work more efficient and enhance Parliament's scrutiny functions.
The Standing Committees are:
Other Standing Committees constituted by other statutes include:
There are also select committees and non-official committees.
The politics of Malta takes place within a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the president of Malta is the constitutional head of state. Executive authority is vested in the president of Malta, with the general direction and control of the Government of Malta remaining with the prime minister of Malta, who is the head of government and the cabinet. Legislative power is vested in the Parliament of Malta, which consists of the president of Malta and the unicameral House of Representatives of Malta with the speaker as the presiding officer of the legislative body. Judicial power remains with the chief justice and the judiciary of Malta. Since independence, the party electoral system has been dominated by the Christian democratic Nationalist Party and the social democratic Labour Party.
The single transferable vote (STV) or proportional-ranked choice voting (P-RCV), is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternative preferences if their preferred candidate is eliminated or elected with surplus votes, so that their vote is used to elect someone they prefer over others in the running. STV aims to approach proportional representation based on votes cast in the district where it is used, so that each vote is worth about the same as another.
The House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the upper house being the Senate. Its composition and powers are set down in Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia.
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. Members of parliament typically form parliamentary groups, sometimes called caucuses, with members of the same political party. Many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members often have a different title. The terms congressman/congresswoman or deputy are equivalent terms used in other jurisdictions. The term parliamentarian is also sometimes used for members of parliament, but this may also be used to refer to unelected government officials with specific roles in a parliament and other expert advisers on parliamentary procedure such as the Senate parliamentarian in the United States. The term is aMembers of parliament typically form parliamentary groups, sometimes called caucuses, with members of the same political party.lso used to the characteristic of performing the duties of a member of a legislature, for example: "The two party leaders often disagreed on issues, but both were excellent parliamentarians and cooperated to get many good things done."
The Storting is the supreme legislature of Norway, established in 1814 by the Constitution of Norway. It is located in Oslo. The unicameral parliament has 169 members and is elected every four years based on party-list proportional representation in nineteen multi-seat constituencies. A member of the Storting is known in Norwegian as a stortingsrepresentant, literally "Storting representative".
In the study of electoral systems, the Droop quota is the minimum number of supporters a party or candidate needs to receive in a district to guarantee they will win at least one seat in a legislature.
The Parliament of Finland is the unicameral and supreme legislature of Finland, founded on 9 May 1906. In accordance with the Constitution of Finland, sovereignty belongs to the people, and that power is vested in the Parliament. The Parliament consists of 200 members, 199 of whom are elected every four years from 13 multi-member districts electing 6 to 37 members using the proportional D'Hondt method. In addition, there is one member from Åland.
The National Council is the lower house of the Federal Assembly, with the upper house being the Council of States. Containing 200 seats, the National Council is the larger of the two houses.
The New Zealand Parliament is the unicameral legislature of New Zealand, consisting of the Sovereign (King-in-Parliament) and the New Zealand House of Representatives. The King is usually represented by his governor-general. Before 1951, there was an upper chamber, the New Zealand Legislative Council. The New Zealand Parliament was established in 1854 and is one of the oldest continuously functioning legislatures in the world. It has met in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, since 1865 and in its current building since 1922.
The Folketing, also known as the Parliament of Denmark or the Danish Parliament in English, is the unicameral national legislature (parliament) of the Kingdom of Denmark — Denmark proper together with the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Established in 1849, the Folketing was the lower house of the bicameral parliament called the Rigsdag until 1953; the upper house was the Landsting. It meets in Christiansborg Palace, on the islet of Slotsholmen in central Copenhagen.
The National Council of the Slovak Republic is the national parliament of Slovakia. It is unicameral and consists of 150 members, who are elected by universal suffrage under proportional representation with seats distributed via largest remainder method with Hagenbach-Bischoff quota every four years.
Elections in Luxembourg are held to determine the political composition of the representative institutions of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a liberal representative democracy, with universal suffrage guaranteed under its constitution. Elections are held regularly, and are considered to be fair and free.
The Parliament of the Hellenes, commonly known as the Hellenic Parliament, is the unicameral legislature of Greece, located in the Old Royal Palace, overlooking Syntagma Square in Athens. The parliament is the supreme democratic institution that represents the citizens through an elected body of Members of Parliament (MPs).
The House of Representatives is the lower house of the National Assembly of Thailand, the legislative branch of the Thai government. The system of government of Thailand is that of a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. The system of the Thai legislative branch is modelled after the Westminster system. The House of Representatives has 500 members, of which 400 are elected through single member constituency elections, while the other 100 are chosen through party lists parallel voting.
The current Constitution of Malta was adopted as a legal order on 21 September 1964, and is the self-declared supreme law of the land. Therefore, any law or action in violation of the Constitution is null and void. Being a rigid constitution, it has a three-tier entrenchment basis in order for any amendments to take place.
Electoral districts go by different names depending on the country and the office being elected.
National remnant is an apportionment scheme used in some party-list proportional representation systems that have multi-member electoral districts. The system uses a Largest remainder method to determine some of the seats in each electoral district. However, after the integer part of the seats in each district is allocated to the parties, the seats left unallocated will then be allocated not in each electoral district in isolation, but in a larger division, such as nationwide or in large separate regions that each encompass multiple electoral districts.
General elections were held in Malta on 26 March 2022 to elect all members of the House of Representatives.
A Member of Parliament (MP) in Bangladesh is a member of the unicameral legislature of Bangladesh, the Jatiya Sangsad or House of the Nation. A majority of members are elected directly in general elections, while a minority of seats are reserved exclusively for women and allocated on a proportional basis. The Constitution specifies that Parliament consists of 300 directly elected members, while 50 seats are reserved for women. The individual who leads the largest party or alliance in parliament usually becomes Prime Minister of Bangladesh. The parliament is currently dissolved by order of the President until the next general election due to the result of the protests ousting the current government.
General elections will be held in Malta by 2027 to elect all members of the House of Representatives. The Labour Party, which had governed Malta since 2013, won a third term in the 2022 elections under Robert Abela. Shortly after the elections, Bernard Grech was re-elected unopposed for the leader of the Nationalist Party.