Alicia Bugeja Said, Rebecca Buttigieg to become parliamentary secretaries

Apr 13 2022

Newly elected Labour MPs Rebecca Buttigieg and Alicia Bugeja Said will be sworn in as parliamentary secretaries on Thursday.

Buttigieg was elected through a casual election on the 9th district, whereas Bugeja Said was elected through the gender corrective mechanism.

Butigieg will be appointed parliamentary secretary for reforms and equality within Byron Camilleri’s Home Affairs Ministry.

Meanwhile, Bugeja Said, who is a former director of Malta’s fisheries department, will become parliamentary secretary for fishing and aquaculture within Anton Refalo’s Agriculture Ministry.

This comes after the Prime Minister announced after the swearing in of cabinet members that two women MPs were poised to join his cabinet. The two will be joining Miriam Dalli, Julia Farrugia Portelli and Alison Zerafa Civelli in cabinet.

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President roles should alternate between men and women suggests Joseph Muscat

Apr 13 2022

Former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has spoken out about the gender quota mechanism, giving his take on even presidential matters. The former PL leader proposed that the role of president should be alternated between men and women.

Due to the mechanism, 22 women made their way into parliament, with female representation boosted to 29% rather than 10-14%. Muscat labelled this as a great improvement on the usual seminars which take place in order to discuss female representation.

Muscat said that rather than having a female president once every 30 years to make a statement, proper change is needed and this is a change which should make the Labour Party proud of itself.

Muscat said that, with 29% of all members in parliament being women, the percentage is closer to the minimum ideal of 33%. ‘The equal representation percentage would be of 40% but when one considers that the median average since the 90s was less than 16%, it is a great improvement’ he said.

Muscat also aimed his criticism at the slew of misogynistic comments which pop up whenever the topic of female representation comes up. ‘Comments like ‘women of substance’ in politics were part of the yearly recipe whenever Woman’s Day came around, it is as though all men have substance’ he said.

Muscat also harkened back to when former PL prime minister Alfred Sant tried to enact the change needed 25 years ago but was not given enough time to do so. ‘Sant was at the forefront of this change and thanks to him the Labour Party does not need any mechanisms to elect female executive members within the party.’

‘Men were scared of losing their place in Parliament and they did not fully understand that women would not be replacing men but be equal to them’ said Muscat.

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Mask free summer for Malta says Charmaine Gauci

Apr 13 2022

Superintendent for Public Health Charmaine Gauci has indicated that Malta will be in for a mask-free summer as measures continue to ease.

She did however say that fully removing mask mandates will ultimately depend on the number of new COVID-19 cases and patients in hospital.

Speaking on the Times of Malta Q&A ‘Ask Charmaine’, the health chief said that masks are still currently mandatory in indoor public spaces and on public transport. However, the change towards no masks would be the first time since the start of the pandemic that masks will not be required indoors.

She went on to explain that Malta had a peak of new cases when the Omicron variant of COVID struck. Malta had a testing positivity rate of 16% in the first week of January.

Speaking about self-testing kits in Malta, the authorities said that they made sure that only the more reliable brands could be imported to Malta. They are to be only sold by pharmacists who can advise customers on how to use them she said.

She also revealed, given that the daily COVID updates are no longer being posted, that there are 131 patients positive for COVID in hospital, with three of them in the ITU. However, 70% of those hospitalised were not there due to the virus.

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Malta now has the largest parliament in all of Europe

Apr 13 2022

Malta’s parliament is the largest one in Europe after a record 79 MPs were voted in following the electoral process closing up on Tuesday.

Malta thus has the biggest number of parliament members per capita of any EU member state. The last casual election for a number of seats for the opposition was held on Tuesday, seeing the gender mechanism applied for the first time.

With six new women MPs added to both sides of the House, the mechanism was intended to add 12 new members. There are at least four women out of every 10 members elected, meaning there are 22 women in the House.

The 79-member House means there is a member of parliament for every 6,532 citizens. The physical building itself however will pose logistical issues since the chamber does not have enough seats.

Speaker Anglu Farrugia said additional rows will be added before the House reconvenes on May 7th. Malta already had the largest parliament per capita in the EU in 2020.

Malta’s House of Representatives has 19 more members than the second-largest per capita parliament in the EU, with Luxembourg having a representative for every 10,578 citizens. Luxembourg has a population slightly larger than Malta’s at 634,730.

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