Almost 90% of eligible, non-Maltese EU voters in 2004 disenfranchised
Raphael Vassallo
Almost 90% of the non-Maltese EU residents who were on the electoral register for the 2004 European Parliament election have been struck off the new register published last Monday by the Electoral Commission, MaltaToday can confirm.
A comparison between the two electoral registers reveals that 966 out of the 1,050 non-Maltese EU citizens enrolled in 2004 are no longer registered, and will not be eligible to vote in Malta on June 6.
Newly registered foreign voters since 2004 amount to little more than 1,000, leaving the total number of enrolled non-Maltese EU nationals approximately the same: a tiny fraction of the estimated 19,000 currently resident in Malta.
All those whose names were removed have a 20-day limit, starting Monday 20 April, to apply for inclusion in the 2009 electoral register.
Mr Joe Calleja, secretary of the Electoral Commission, this week confirmed the above figures and explained that none of the 966 disenfranchised voters had requested to be deleted from the 2009 register. According to Calleja, all non-Maltese residents had until 31 March to apply for inclusion, and those who failed to apply were removed automatically.
The situation is markedly different for Maltese nationals, who did not have to re-register for the June elections. But despite the apparent discrimination, Calleja stressed that this practice conforms to accepted procedures in other EU countries.
“We followed the same procedure in line with the European Parliament law on European elections, approved also by the Maltese parliament,” he said.
Calleja also said voters were informed of this procedure by means of an extensive media advertising blitz. The Electoral Commission adverts explained that “non-Maltese EU nationals who wish to vote in Malta and who have the necessary qualifications in terms of the European Parliament Election Act of 2003 must call personally to complete a specific form at the Office of the Electoral Commission.”
But at no point in the advertising campaign was it explained that the 1,050 non-Maltese EU residents who had already carried out this procedure in 2004, were expected to do so again in order to vote in 2009.
Nor is it clear why they had to do so in the first place, when the same voters are automatically entered into the local council election register upon processing of their Maltese ID card.
One of the disenfranchised voters, an elderly resident originally from the Netherlands, called this newspaper to complain after discovering she had been deleted from the register.
“I have lived here in Malta since 1964, and in all this time I have been a taxpayer,” Petra Van De Stolpe said on Friday. “I was very pleased when Malta joined the EU, thinking that European residents would finally be given the same rights. But this is the last straw. I was never informed that I had to go through the registration process again. It’s very inconvenient, as I have a broken ankle and can’t walk. How can I go to Valletta to re-register?”
Another EU citizen resident in Malta made the same discovery this week.
“I am German married to a Maltese and have been living in Malta for the last 26 years. In 2004, I registered for the European Parliament elections,” Annette Borg, a vet, told MaltaToday. “Friends checked the register for the coming election this week, and to my surprise they couldn’t find my name on the list! I am shocked and upset as I haven’t seen any announcements or notices anywhere calling for re-registration. I read a newspaper everyday, and would have been aware of any announcements.”
Green Party chairman Arnold Cassola, himself an MEP candidate, has called on the Electoral Commission to exercise its legal power to automatically re-register all these candidates.
“There may have been a genuine misunderstanding, whereby it was never specified that these voters were expected to re-apply for registration, and they were never individually informed of this requirement,” he told MaltaToday. “But the same law which states that the Commission ‘can’ (not ‘must’) ask non-Maltese voters to re-apply, also allows the Electoral Commission to re-register them automatically if a mistake was made. Considering also that the government has meanwhile moved legislation to facilitate early voting for Maltese nationals residing abroad, it is in the spirit of the same government initiative to make things easier for all those eligible to vote in the June elections.”
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