Updated - Adds resumption of sitting - There were heated arguments in a court room this morning after the Labour Party failed to produce two witnesses it had summoned in the case over mistakes in the vote counting of the 2013 general election.
A court had given the party a deadline of today to produce its witnesses after complaints that the case was being dragged out.
When the case continued to be heard, the PL produced PN sub-delegate Ian Micallef and Electoral Commission official Vanni Ganado as witnesses.
But another two Electoral Commission officials - Louis Fsadni and Anthony Gellel - did not turn up because they were not found. The court was told that a wrong address was given for one of them and no one opened the door in the latter case.
Amid heated debate, Justice Lorraine Schembri Orland pointed out that she had given a deadline of today for production of the witnesses.
Lawyer Toni Abela, representing the Labour Party, argued that he had done his duty and he was not at fault for what had happened. It was the Electoral Commission which had not traced the officials or had given the wrong address.
The court insisted that the deadline was today but suspended the sitting to 1pm for the witnesses to be summoned.
SITTING RESUMES, ONLY ONE WITNESS TURNS UP
When the sitting resumed at 1pm, Mr Fsadni showed up and it was explained that the address given by the Electoral Commission had mistakenly said San Gwann instead of St Julians.
However, in a statement this afternoon, the Electoral Commission said it had provided the correct addresses requested.
Mr Gellel, who works for the commission only during elections, could not be present this afternoon as he is in Gozo.
An argument again broke out between Dr Abela, who requested more time and Paul Borg Olivier, representing the PN, who objected.
The court decided that Dr Abela had had four sittings since November to present his witness and he had been warned that today was the last chance. Therefore, the time for presenting witnesses had expired and a request for additional time was denied.
Dr Abela said the proceedings should stop until a separate court decided another case on which court was really competent to consider this case.
The court said it would issue a decision on this point on Tuesday.
In his evidence, Mr Fsadni said that the mistakes in the counting process on the eighth district appeared to have been made when, during the counting of the votes of Claudette Buttigieg, the officials used a 'sleeve' to group 50 ballot papers which had already been used for Michael Asciak's ballot papers. The ballot papers were then placed in Dr Asciak's pigeon hole, not Ms Buttigieg's.
With regard to the mistake in the 13th district, there was a discrepancy of 10 votes which were initially found missing but surfaced later.
Mr Ganado, who gave his evidence earlier, said the decision for the vote-counting to continue even when the mistakes were noticed, was taken on the basis of legal advice by Prof. Ian Refalo. He said the problem stemmed from the fact that the English and Maltese texts of the law did not tally with regard to what should be done in these circumstances, and Prof. Refalo opted for the Maltese version, which said that counting should continue and could not be re-started.
However, he said, when there was a similar issue during vote counting for Zebbug local council, the vote counting went back to the first count.