Gibraltar House of Assembly

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gibraltar

This article is part of the series: Politics and government of Gibraltar

Governor Sir Robert Fulton Chief Minister Peter Caruana Opposition Leader Joe Bossano House of Assembly Political parties Elections: 2006 referendum Politicians Disputed status of Gibraltar See also Politics of Spain Politics of the U.K.

Other countries • Politics Portal view • talk • edit

The Gibraltar House of Assembly is the legislature of the British territory of Gibraltar, located at the northern side of the Strait of Gibraltar which is the passage between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

This unicameral body consists of fifteen members elected by vote of the Gibraltarian people and two appointed members, including the Attorney-General. The body is mandated by Gibraltar's 1969 constitution. The term "House of Assembly" has been commonly used for the legislatures of British territories that are less than fully sovereign.

In the current election system, each voter is allowed to vote for eight members of the Assembly. Due to the small area of Gibraltar and its territorial continuity, precincts serve only as polling places, not political units and there are no electoral districts served by the members, who are instead elected "at large" to serve the territory as a whole.

The system lends itself to block voting -- each of the parties or electoral coalitions tends to nomimate a slate of eight candidates and encourage its supporters to vote for all of them. In practice, the winning side gets all of its nominees elected, with the other seven coming from the second-place side (currently a two-party coalition).

The first (current) constitution was granted two years after Gibraltarians voted almost unanimously (99%+) to remain affiliated with Britain in the 1960s. The new draft constitution has been proposed two years after the Gibraltarians voted again in a second referendum with a similar margin against changing to a system of joint British-Spanish sovereignty. Under this proposed reform, the legislature would not include two appointed ex officio members. See Gibraltar_constitutional_referendum,_2006.

[edit] Latest election

[discuss] – [edit]
Summary of the 28 November 2003 Gibraltar House of Assembly election results

Parties	Votes	%	Seats
Gibraltar Social Democrats		51.5	8
Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party		39.7	5
Gibraltar Liberal Party			2
Gibraltar Labour Party		8.3	-
Ex-officio members			2
Total (turnout %)			17
Source: Parties and elections