Court denies right of visually impaired to vote on their own

The associations Malta Society of the Blind, Gozo Aid for the Visually Impaired and Torball Society of the Blind, said in a statement that on June 26 the First Hall of the Civil Court delivered a judgment in the names Francis Tirchett pro et noe vs the Electoral Commissioner et.

Through this judgment, the visually impaired were again denied the right to vote independently and secretly, like other sighted citizens. Following many attempts, which led nowhere, they filed a court case.

The court, however, decided not to deal with the issue, in that it deemed it of a constitutional nature. Apart from that, it ignored the Equal Opportunities Act of 2000, under which they were seeking remedy and it also set aside the fact that this law prohibits all discriminatory treatments on grounds of disability.

Through its reasoning, the court completely ignored the interpretation Parliament wished to attribute to the Act. "We, the visually impaired, feel discriminated against by the method through which we presently vote, that is through the help of the officers of the Electoral Commission, in that another method exists whereby we would vote on our own," the societies said in a statement.

"(This) latter method consists in a cardboard template the size of the ballot paper, which would simply serve to guide us in casting our electoral choices. From its judgment, the Court appears not to have understood the issue and yet it decided against us.

"We feel profoundly aggrieved, in that all institutions failed to act in a concrete way and, now that other institution, which is supposed to render justice to all, cynically turned its (back on) us too. Therefore, we once again appeal to the Electoral Commission as well as to parliament, so that all measures are taken to give us what, after all, is our basic human right."