If the Labour Party had the “moral courage” to admit it made a mistake, the Nationalist Party would have helped find a solution to enable some 2,800 young people to vote in the divorce referendum, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said yesterday.

“There were solutions and we would have participated in these solutions, but (Labour leader Joseph Muscat) did not have the moral courage to admit his mistake,” the PN leader said, accusing his Labour counterpart of “blatant manipulation”.

Last week the electoral commission decided it would base the upcoming referendum on the October 2010 electoral register instead of the one that will be published in mid-April.

The commission had been discussing the possibility of postponing the publication of the President’s writ to allow time for the new electoral register to be published. At first it had legal advice saying that nothing in the law prevented this from being done but law professor Ian Refalo later advised against this move, saying it would be wiser to publish the writ immediately according to the practice, so as not to give the impression of partiality. Having been issued by the country’s President, publication should not be delayed, he advised.

Dr Gonzi yesterday appeared scandalised at the fact that the Labour Party wanted to delay the publication of the writ to prevent this problem. He said the Labour Party had been advised against this “manoeuvre” but insisted on pushing forward instead of seeking other solutions.

“Are these the values that we want to pass on to our younger generation? How to play around with laws to escape admitting a mistake and put the blame on someone else?”

The government had simply followed the terms of the motion which Dr Muscat had written, was signed by all his MPs and later approved in Parliament. If there was something wrong with the timing, Dr Muscat should have noticed it before.

“Even the biggest (political) amateur wouldn’t have been so hard-headed. All he had to do was change the motion and include all the young people.”

Instead, Dr Muscat’s solution was to keep the President’s writ “in a drawer” until deciding to act upon it on the ideal date.

But pro-divorce Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, who has described this affair as “shameful”, said Dr Gonzi was now confirming that the more recent electoral register could have been used. The reasons not to use it, he warned, could be seen as “petty”.

Not allowing 2,800 young voters to make their voice heard on this important issue could influence the way these people would vote at the election in two years’ time, Dr Pullicino Orlando said.

“Have we considered the difficulties and unnecessary expense that could have been avoided? Hundreds of people will have died since October. Many others will have changed their residence. Hundreds will have changed their surnames due to marriage,” he added.

“These are complications that we are now saying we did not avoid for a reason that many will view as being petty.”

Dr Gonzi opened his speech by listing various achievements in the sectors of employment, education and health which, he said, showed that his party was effective on social issues.

He said the people’s sacrifices over the past few years were not futile, and gave the government the power to save jobs and continue to provide free health and education services. These aspects helped to strengthen families, which he described as Malta’s most precious attribute.

“We are being tested and examined on our values. This is a competition between two parties... a competition on how much we believe in our values,” he said, before repeating his predecessor’s mantra: “Good will prevail”.

Dr Gonzi was speaking at the end of a three-day conference for party activists working within local committees. The press was invited to cover his final speech which was delivered after a few hours of taking questions from the party activists.

Sources said they spoke mostly about communication within the party. Others complained about Dr Pullicino Orlando’s actions in the run-up to the divorce referendum, which, they felt, damaged the party. Immigration was not mentioned and the situation in Libya was also barely given a thought, except that some of those who attended praised Dr Gonzi’s handling of the situation.

“There seemed to be consensus that during the past three years, Dr Gonzi faced a series of international crises but the country continued to move forward,” one source said.