Legal advice to the Electoral Commission by a leading Constitutional lawyer said it was possible for 2,800 new voters to vote in the May divorce referendum so long as there was an agreement on the matter, according to Labour Leader Joseph Muscat.

Speaking during a radio broadcast yesterday, Dr Muscat said there had been a clear agreement in the commission whereby the President could have published the referendum writ up to 15 days after the motion was approved in Parliament, and the register would have been published on April 18, with 2,800 new voters.

“Our party’s commissioner (Labour’s representative) had the word this would happen. So much so that last week we had a meeting with the electoral commissioner, throughout which this agreement was mentioned, and Prof. Ian Refalo (the commission’s lawyer) said that once this agreement was in place there was absolutely no problem.”

He said there had been a formal agreement from two of the Prime Minister’s representatives but there was one representative who started to cause problems in subsequent meetings and another did not attend.

“Suddenly something happened, and I am informed that the order came from high up, the government took this direction and denied the young people from voting,” Dr Muscat said.

The Nationalist Party had reacted to Labour’s criticism that these votes would be lost by saying this was a direct result of the motion Labour proposed in Parliament.

“If they noticed the motion was going to prevent young people from voting, I would have expected the PM to stand up and say let’s change this to let these young people vote. No one spoke about this,” Dr Muscat said.

In the broadcast, he also spoke about Maltese businesses in Libya. He said the government could give them more help with the crisis they were facing, even though Dr Muscat made it clear he was not speaking of a bailout but of agreements with the tax departments so that businesses that generated so much tax would be shown some leniency.

He said that if Maltese money was paying for bailouts across Europe, it should at least help fellow countrymen whose investment had been compromised.

He also criticised the government for the way it was treating businesses, saying that when contacted by businessmen, ministers had said they were taking the risk because they had invested in Libya.

In a reaction, the Finance Ministry said Malta Enterprise was working closely with businesses affected in Libya, and that it was enabling tax rescheduling for those whose cash flow was affected by the Libyan turmoil. It also said Dr Muscat was misinformed when mentioning the money lent to Greece by the government, as he did not specify that the money was lent at very high interest rates.