Chief Electoral Commissioner Salvu Gauci said yesterday that the process for the holding of casual elections would continue as scheduled despite the constitutional challenge filed by the Nationalist Party on the validity of the electoral result.
Asked by The Sunday Times on whether the Commission is considering postponing the elections until the court clarifies the issue, Mr Gauci said this will not be the case.
“I have legal advice to continue with the casual elections process as we have a published result.”
Asked whether this may possibly make things worse once the Commission’s result is being challenged, Mr Gauci repeated that “the process must move on”.
Last week the PN filed a constitutional application against the Electoral Commission insisting that through mistakes in the counting process two Labour candidates, Edward Scicluna and Justyne Caruana, were elected by mistake instead of PN candidates Claudette Buttigieg and Frederick Azzopardi.
Although the two Nationalist candidates have still made it to Parliament through a Constitutional provision which ensures proportionality, the PN is insisting that for correctness sake its two candidates should be declared elected on their own steam and that the difference in seats in Parliament should be reduced to seven from nine.
During earlier court procedures the Electoral Commission admitted mistakes on the eight and 13th districts.
Constitutional lawyers who spoke to The Sunday Times yesterday said the Commission should stop and reflect on the way forward before proceeding with casual elections.
Despite the court challenge, the Commission has already scheduled the holding of casual elections for the seats vacated by Labour for Thursday.
“This is a very tricky issue and the Commission needs to reflect properly instead of digging in its heels as the situation might become even more complicated,” a senior constitutional law expert, who preferred to remain anonymous, told The Sunday Times.
“Imagine if the PN is right. The Commission would be electing a new MP to fill the seat vacated by Edward Scicluna when the latter should not have been elected,” he argued.
The same caution was expressed by Austin Bencini, another constitutional lawyer.
“This constitutional case needs to be decided urgently because it impinges on the democratic legitimacy of the new Parliament,” he said.
“Although this does not in any way affect the political majorities, it puts into question the legitimacy of Parliament. One wonders whether the holding of by-elections could possibly further complicate the issue,” he said.
The PN’s initial claims for a recount on the two districts was turned down by the constitutional court but only on a technicality as it argued that once the two candidates were elected there was no juridical need for a recount.
However, the court also noted the admission by the Electoral Commission that 50 votes were incorrectly transferred on the eighth district while 10 votes were “unaccounted for” on the 13th.