The Labour Party has filed about 200 court applications to remove voters from the Electoral Register, but has said it is ready to discuss changing the laws on issues of voting eligibility.

Nationalist Party general secretary Paul Borg Olivier yesterday called a news conference to say the court applications were causing great inconvenience to those who were being targeted because they did not support Labour.

He said the PN had not made such requests in 10 years and only filed “positive” court applications to get people on the register, rather than striking them off.

People were being placed in undignified situations uselessly, Dr Borg Oliver said, pointing out that voters were forced to defend their rights in court simply because Labour was acting on “wrong information” about them.

The PN said this was mostly happening to those who spent some time abroad because of studies, work or even medical treatment.

In one case, a voter was targeted after receiving chemotherapy abroad. Even priests who had to spend a considerable amount of time in Rome were being targeted.

Labour’s actions went against the spirit of the freedom of movement acquired through the country’s accession to the EU.

Dr Borg Olivier explained that the law only allowed people to vote if they would have spent six of the previous 18 months living in Malta.

Asked why the Nationalist Government did not change the law, he said this was a legalistic point that might need to be discussed, but his was a political point.

He said the matter further showed how Labour was only interested in chopping heads while the PN believed in the sacrosanct right to vote and had fought to introduce a rolling Electoral Register so that all 18-year-olds would have an automatic right to vote.

In a quick reaction to Dr Borg Olivier’s comments, Labour said it was prepared to discuss a change in legislation.

“If GonziPN wants to put its money where its mouth is, it should propose a change in legislation,” the party said, adding it was not ready to ignore the Constitution and the PN should have nothing to fear in anyone applying the law correctly.

“Any attempt at crying wolf is at best puerile and at worst an example of arrogance and crass hypocrisy,” Labour added.

The Times asked Labour to say how many court applications it filed in the past year and how many had been withdrawn or rejected due to incorrect information.

It also asked why Labour felt the need to enforce this seemingly outdated legis-lation and whether it had any checks and balances to ensure it was not inconven-iencing innocent people or acting on false or malicious reports.

No replies were forthcoming at the time of writing.