Arnold Cassola: ‘Yesterday’s Constitutional Court Sentence Is A Victory For All Maltese Women’
Independent candidate Arnold Cassola, contesting in the upcoming general election on the 10th and 11th districts, stated that “yesterday’s Constitutional Court sentence was a victory and a gift for all Maltese women”.
This comes as the Constitutional Court recently decided that he has the right to challenge the gender quota mechanism which only rewards Labour or Nationalist Party candidates and not other parties or independent candidates.
“Basically, in order to be co-opted, Maltese women are being forced to suck up to the PL and to the PN party leaders and, if they refuse to do so, they will never be able to be co-opted,” he explained in a statement.
“In reality, the gender corrective mechanism favours only PL and PN women and excludes all other independent-minded Maltese women from benefiting from the co-option mechanism.”
This idea brings with it a new form of discrimination against candidates, that are not affiliated with the PN or PL.
“In fact, the PN and the PL had concocted between them a plan to consolidate their grip over the Maltese parliament, by ensuring that they each get six more female MP’s each.”
“The two parties had agreed to dupe the people by wrapping up the whole package as a measure in favour of Maltese women,” he said.
Yesterday’s Constitutional Court judgement, which has deemed that Arnold Cassola does have juridical interest in the case, opens up the possibility of challenging this law meant to co-opt exclusively PL and PN women and instead of opening it up to all Maltese women, independently of their political affiliation.
What do you make of the Constitutional Court’s judgement?
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