The Nationalist Party is insisting that the Labour Party did not suffer any breach of human rights when a Constitutional Court annulled a previous court’s decision to allocate extra parliamentary seats to the PN, but declared that the first court had jurisdiction over the case.
The complex legal argument revolves around a new case filed by the PL.
The case revolves around a mistake in the counting of votes in the general election 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.
The PN instituted court proceedings against the Electoral Commission and the Attorney General, claiming the mistakes affected the outcome of the election result and requesting to be awarded the two seats.
The First Hall has already ruled once on the PN’s case and ordered the Electoral Commission to award two additional seats to the PN.
But at the end of May the Constitutional Court annulled that decision, upholding Labour’s argument that it should have been included in the case, and sent the case back to the First Hall, now presided by Madam Justice Loraine Schembri Orland.
Then, last month, the PL filed its new claim objecting to that part of the Constitutional Court’s decision finding that the First Hall has jurisdiction over the case. The PL said the Constitutional Court deprived it of making its arguments on that point, in breach of its right to a fair hearing, and called on the First Hall to provide a remedy.
Today PL lawyer Toni Abela said the party wanted Madam Justice Schembri Orland to put the PN’s case on hold until the PL case (appointed before a different judge) was decided. Failure to do so could lead to legal complications in future.
Lawyer Ian Refalo, representing the Electoral Commission, said the second litigation was about the first and they were “inextricably linked”. A solution would be for the same judge to preside over both cases and hear them at the same time.
Attorney General Peter Grech agreed with this but Dr Abela warned that this could still lead to legal complications since the same judge would have expressed an opinion over a case before deciding it.
Lawyer Paul Borg Olivier, for the PN, said he had no objections to both cases being heard together.
He stressed that the PN did not believe that the PL’s rights had been breached since the Constitutional Court had ultimately ordered the case to be heard from scratch and any arguments about jurisdiction could be raised at this point by the PL.
He said the PL’s application was frivolous and the request breached the very nature of constitutional cases which, by definition, were urgent.
Madam Justice Schembri Orland will decide on the way forward on July 21.