A judge yesterday ruled that the Nationalist Party had been deprived of two parliamentary seats as a result of a procedural error during the counting of votes in the last general election.
The mistake, according to the court, led to lack of proportionality, as prescribed by law, in that the difference in parliamentary seats belonging to the government and the Opposition should have been seven not nine.
In order not to cause a snowball effect on laws enacted since the last election, especially by removing two elected members of Parliament and giving their seat to the next in line, Madam Justice Jacqueline Padovani Grima ordered the Electoral Commission to award two additional parliamentary seats to the two candidates fielded by the Nationalist Party who garnered the highest number of votes but were not elected, irrespective of the district they contested.
After the March 2013 election, the PN had instituted court proceedings against the Electoral Commission and the Attorney General over mistakes in the vote counting process, which, it claimed, affected the outcome of the result. This, it argued, would have meant that the PN should have won two more seats. The issue revolves around a mistake in the counting process on the eighth district when a packet of 50 votes belonging to PN candidate Claudette Buttigieg was mistakenly transferred to PN candidate Michael Asciak. Dr Asciak was eliminated and Labour’s Edward Scicluna was elected.
On the 13th district, 10 votes belonging to PN candidate Frederick Azzopardi went missing and Labour’s Justyne Caruana was elected.
Packet of 50 votes was mistakenly transferred
The government said in a statement it was studying the judgment and would be filing an appeal.
There was jubilation in a packed courtroom as the judge read out her decision. Ms Buttigieg burst into tears.
In a detailed, 72-page judgment, quoting both Maltese and European case law, Madam Justice Padovani Grima, sitting in the First Hall of the Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction, upheld the PN’s arguments and ruled that the party was not proportionately represented in Parliament.
She declared there were “shortcomings in the process” on both districts in question and this was in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights.
“Without a shadow of doubt, the result of the March 2013 general election was not reflected in the implementation of the proportional representation formula enshrined in Maltese laws, so it does not faithfully represent the actual votes of the Maltese people,” the judge said.
She found “of particular concern” the fact that the Electoral Commission had failed to acknowledge the gravity of the mistake and did not find an adequate solution when it was evident there had been an error in the first count vote.
Since Ms Buttigieg had not yet been eliminated from the race, correcting the mistake would not have been so complicated, the court said. The mistake meant Ms Buttigieg was not elected “on her own steam” and this led to a distortion in the seat majority.
“The Electoral Commission was in duty bound to take positive steps, as opposed to refraining from interfering, to address the mistake and solve it.
“It was also in duty bound to ensure that the mistake was not amplified” and addressed before the mathematical calculation related to the number of seats allocated to each party kicked in.
Madam Justice Padovani Grima said a distortion of two MPs for the minority party amounted to a direct interference with the people’s free expression. She said the serious shortcomings of the Electoral Commission were in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights and, therefore, ordered it to grant parliamentary seats to the two unelected PN candidates having the largest number of votes within 30 days.