Maltese voters should vote for a political party, instead of choosing individual candidates from the same party who then compete with each other by promising favours, according to the head of Malta’s third party ADPD.

“Clientelism is one of the basic problems with our democracy. This is why we proposed the adoption of a party list in the current debate on amendments to the Constitution for gender balance,” Carmel Cacopardo told Lovin Malta in an interview.

He said Labour continued to thrive today, despite the corruption scandals, because it was “more efficient at dishing out electoral favours”.

Meanwhile, the Nationalist Party is not trusted because it is “the cause of the current chaos”, having left dysfunctional institutions in place after 25 years in government.

He said the best option for the country would be to have a coalition government so that there are checks and balances even within government.

For this to happen, ADPD would need to get two to three seats elected to Parliament while none of the two bigger parties get a majority of votes.

He said it would be at this stage that the electoral prospects for a Green Party like ADPD would significantly improve and start to be registered in polls.

Cacopardo dismissed current polls which show ADPD failing to improve its long-standing insignificance in surveys.

“The numbers are so small that polls can’t give us a good enough picture,” he said, hoping that in central and northern regions ADPD would poll significantly better than on a national level.

Cacopardo said Prime Minister Robert Abela was a product of his predecessor Joseph Muscat and had “no merit” in the current reforms being undertaken since his hand was forced.

He dismissed PN leader Bernard Grech as being “more of the same” who was a buttress for the Nationalist Party in the anti-divorce campaign.