A judge yesterday awarded the Nationalist Party two parliamentary seats in view of a procedural error during the counting of votes in the last general election.
Still, although the court case has been dragging on since just days after the March 2013 election, yesterday’s judgment does not mean the matter is finally settled because the government and the Labour Party gave notice of appeal saying it had “serious constitutional implications”.
In a 146-page judgment, Madam Justice Lorraine Schembri Orland ruled that the mistake led to lack of proportionality, as prescribed by law, in that the difference in parliamentary seats allocated to the government and to the Opposition should have been seven not nine.
Not to cause a snowball effect on laws enacted so far during this legislature, the court ordered the Electoral Commission to award two additional parliamentary seats to the two PN candidates who won the highest number of votes but were not elected, irrespective of the district they had contested.
The PN had complained that the mistakes during the vote counting process in the eighth and 13th electoral districts affected the result.
On the eighth district, a packet of 50 votes belonging to PN candidate Claudette Buttigieg was mistakenly transferred to PN candidate Michael Asciak.
On the 13th district, 10 votes belonging to PN candidate Frederick Azzopardi had gone “missing”.
The court declared that shortcomings in the electoral process were in breach of both Maltese laws and the European Convention. The judge held the Electoral Commission responsible for the mistakes.
“The fact that mistakes were committed does not absolve the Electoral Commission from its duty to ensure that the electoral system is upheld, especially in a general election when the electorate’s wishes are directly reflected in the choice of their representative,” the court said.
It described what had happened on the 13th district as “at worst, suspicious, at best, unacceptable”. Having said that, the court dismissed Mr Azzopardi’s claims that his rights had been breached because there was not enough evidence to prove he had been directly impacted by the irregularities.
However, the judge noted the mistakes in the eighth district had directly impacted Ms Buttigieg who was not able to get elected on her own steam and this led to a distortion in the seat majority.
Despite finding that Ms Buttigieg had been deprived of her right to be elected by quota, the court offered her no remedy since she still found her place in Parliament through a by-election.
In attributing responsibility, Madam Justice Schembri Orland said there was a “failure in the electoral process” and this amounted to a direct interference with the people’s free expression.
The court held that the result gave an incorrect interpretation of the will of the electorate. The 2013 poll should have given 38 seats to Labour and 31 to the PN, the judge ruled, saying that the PN should be awarded two seats within 30 days.