News | Sunday, 15 February 2009

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Elections for sale?

The ongoing corrupt practices trial may prove embarrassing for the PN, but even if confirmed by the law courts, the allegations will not topple the present government

Raphael Vassallo
Anglu Farrugia has often been described as a firebrand, a loose cannon, a man who ‘shoots from the hip’.
Perhaps for this reason there was a general consensus of “cry wolf” (some would say “sour grapes”) when the PL deputy leader for parliamentary affairs launched a personal crusade against what he called “vote-buying” in the last election.
Many also remarked on the irony that it had to be a Labour MP to complain about electoral fraud, 20 years after an election that will be remembered for the many violent incidents in polling stations all over the island: most conspicuously in Zejtun, then as now a Labour stronghold.
Still, this did not stop Farrugia from compiling a dossier of allegations on the subject – mostly from employees of companies who claimed they were threatened or somehow coerced into voting Nationalist – and submitting it for the consideration of the Police Commissioner.
In a press conference last June, Farrugia alleged the involvement of a full-blown organised criminal racket, suggesting that anything between €1 million and €2 million may have changed hands for votes. He also claimed that ‘takers’ were given mobile phones with which to photograph their ballot sheet in the polling station as ‘proof’; and presented the police with some 50 mobile phone pictures taken by people allegedly paid or bullied to vote PN.
Nine months later, the Attorney General concluded that there was sufficient evidence to institute criminal proceedings against at least one of the suspects involved: Pierre Bartolo, a 44-year-old director of Papillon Caterers. The case got under way this week, and while matters have not been helped by the first two witnesses to take the stand – one is already embroiled in a high-profile bribery case involving the former Chief Justice, and the other is a self-avowed Nationalist, which undermines the central thesis that she had to be “threatened” to vote PN – few will now repeat the claim that Farrugia’s allegations are ‘unsubstantiated’.

The implications for the PN
It is an embarrassing situation for the party in government, which although not directly connected with proceedings, has nonetheless maintained a deafening wall of silence on the subject.
Contacted yesterday, PN president Victor Scerri had little to add to his party’s previous public pronouncements – which in turn said nothing of substance.
“This is a matter that has never been discussed internally within the party,” he commented. “The case is now before the law courts, so it would be imprudent to comment at this stage.”
Scerri did, however, appear keen to downplay his presence for the initial hearing this week – which was duly picked up and reported on the Labour media. Unprompted, Scerri explained that it was “perfectly normal” that a practising lawyer, who is “in and out of the Law Courts” every day, would happen to be in the courtroom at the time.
Be that as it may, the PN’s silence today contrasts sharply with the same party’s hysteria during and immediately after the 1987 election, which it won by a whisker despite very glaring attempts to rig the outcome.
Shortly after taking office, Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami insisted on legal action against a number of well-known Labour canvassers – among them Edwin Bartolo aka “Il-Qahbu”, Michael Spiteri aka “Il-Qattus” and Alfred Desira “L-Indjan” – on charges ranging from preventing Electoral Commissioners from performing their duties, to denying entry to polling stations to Nationalist sympathisers, to physical assault and grievous bodily harm.
Bartolo was eventually handed an 18-month prison sentence, Spiteri eight months, and the rest were fined between Lm30 and Lm300. One suspect, Ivan Giardina, was acquitted.
Admittedly, a strict comparison is impossible, as the 1987 charges were greatly aggravated by violence; but for Anglu Farrugia, the current court case represents the tip of the iceberg.
“It is not acceptable that we carry on in a situation where the government continues dishing out favours on the eve of an election, when it is supposed to in caretaker mode,” he said yesterday. Then he enumerates a litany of pre-electoral ills: the granting of ODZ permits days before the election; the secret deal with the Armier squatters; abuse of electoral law, resulting in ineligible voters being allowed to vote; culminating in the National Auditor’s report for 2008, which revealed that many ministries had overshot their allocated budgets… spending the most in the run-up to election day.
“In 25 years of a Nationalist government – soon to become a Nationalist empire, if it goes on much longer – they have never had the decency to invite over international observers for elections,” Farrugia, himself an accredited election observer with the OCSA, remonstrates.
If the PN did invite such observers in 2008, Farrugia argues that the election would not be considered valid according to international law.
That said, the issue of governments ignoring their caretaker role is hardly new. Before the 1987 election, Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud dished out as many as 8,000 jobs in the public sector: a fact which was afterwards held responsible for the budget deficit all the way until 2003.
Besides, even if this week’s court case does conclude that votes were indeed bought or improperly controlled, it would not be sufficient for the PL to call for a re-election.
Maltese law, Farrugia observes, is clear on this point. “You have three days (from the election result becoming known) to submit a formal complaint to the Electoral Commissioner, and if irregularities are shown in the investigation, you can challenge the election result in court,” he says. “If I knew in those three days what I know today, and had the same evidence, I would definitely have filed the complaint.”

rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.