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| NEWS | Sunday, 25 May 2008 Louis Gatt defends MLP electoral office Labour vice-president and head of its electoral office Louis Gatt yesterday reacted with a seven-page reply to the MLP defeat report, saying it was “particularly vitiated to place the blame of the electoral defeat on the electoral office, which for the past 16 years has handled local and national elections and was always successful in its work, whatever the result.”Gatt took issue with the commission’s report claims that the electoral office he led had adopted a “business-as-usual approach” throughout the election. “I would much rather thank those volunteers and encourage more work for the party, but the commission which made this analysis fires baseless insinuations.” Gatt also said the commission never asked him about the decision to extend voting time by one hour. He said the Electoral Commission would have waited for nobody’s agreement with its decision to extend the voting hours: “The Electoral Commission is autonomous by virtue of the Constitution of Malta and although it hears out the parties’ delegates, it discusses internally and takes its own decisions.” He said the Commission never asked the party to discuss the extension of the voting time. “As if I am going to believe it was the PN that first raised the alarm on queues in Zejtun and Marsa between 3pm and 4pm… these are all lies.” With reference to accusations that 20% of Labour’s electoral database was incorrect, Gatt said that if this was the case then it was the official electoral register that was incorrect. He said the fact that embarkation cards are no longer used, made it difficult to ascertain who of those overseas voters were eligible to vote or not. He said members of the Labour administration were against making court writs to cancel votes. He said the party made sure it issued clear instructions on how people were to vote, by distributing 70,000 specimen of ballot sheets, and ensuring that as many people as possible collected their voting documents, calling voters at particular times to ask them whether they need help in collecting their voting documents and to urge them to vote on election day. Gatt said the electoral office ensured their voters would know which telephone number they had to call at Air Malta to book their flights to Malta to be able to vote. He said he even protested verbally with Air Malta and the Electoral Commission over long delays in ‘verifying’ the names of certain voters who wanted to book their flights to Malta. Any comments? |
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Managing editor Saviour Balzan | Tel. ++356 21382741 | Fax: ++356 21385075 | Email
Managing editor Saviour Balzan | Tel. ++356 21382741 | Fax: ++356 21385075 | Email