Former Nationalist Party general secretary Paul Borg Olivier and a university mathematician told a judge yesterday that mistakes made in vote counting at the last general election gave Labour a parliamentary majority of nine, when the majority should have been seven.

Dr Borg Olivier and Professor Anton Buhagiar took to the witness stand in the case instituted by the Nationalist Party against the Electoral Commission.

Dr Borg Olivier said that according to his workings, in terms of the Constitution – article 52 on proportionality – Labour’s majority should have translated into a seven-seat gap in Parliament and not nine.

This meant that the Nationalist Party was now disproportionately represented in the House.

He said that University mathematician Prof. Buhagiar, whom he had consulted, had reached the same conclusion.

Taking the witness stand, Prof Buhagiar said Dr Borg Olivier had asked him to look into the matter and work out the mathematics in terms of the Constitution and according to different scenarios.

He said that if the mistakes in vote counting on the eighth and 13th districts were not taken into consideration, then the workings by the Electoral Commission giving Labour a nine-seat parliamentary majority were correct.

However, when the mistakes were taken into consideration, Labour would have ended up with a seven-seat majority.

The PN is claiming that a 50-vote mistake was made in the eighth district where a packet of 50 votes belonging to its candidate Claudette Buttigieg was mistakenly transferred to another PN candidate, Michael Asciak. When Dr Asciak was eliminated, Labour’s Edward Scicluna was elected.

On the 13th district, 10 votes for candidate Frederick Azzopardi had gone missing, helping Labour’s Justyne Caruana to get elected.

The case continues.