Independent MEP candidates will be allowed to have their logos on this month’s electoral ballot, the Electoral Commission has told Arnold Cassola.

The decision was made following a complaint filed by Prof. Cassola, who is running as an independent MEP candidate in the elections.

Prof. Cassola had contested the Electoral Commission’s reasoning that logos could only be displayed alongside the names of candidates belonging to political parties.

Prof. Cassola pushed to have his logo included on ballot sheets.

“Hats off to the Electoral Commission,” Prof. Cassola said.

“Despite being all nominated by the PL and the PN, the members of the Commission – when confronted by my strong arguments – decided to eliminate the disadvantage independent candidates faced".

Article 49 (6) of the General Elections Act allows candidates to display their badge before their name on ballot sheets “indicating the political party, if any, to which the candidate belongs”.

Opinion: What I stand for - Arnold Cassola

Prof. Cassola had argued that nothing in that article suggested that independent candidates were precluded from displaying a logo on ballot sheets. 

“You are saying, by way of example, that ‘doctors deserve a pension; therefore anyone who is not a doctor does not deserve a pension’. This is absurd reasoning,” he wrote in his plea.

His appeal must have resonated with commission members, who informed Prof. Cassola that independent candidates would be allowed to display their logo on ballot sheets.

Maltese go to the polls to elect their European Parliament members on May 25.