Even EU nationals who re-registered in March have been struck off the European electoral register, as the EP’s Malta representation asks Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi to take action on the issue
Raphael Vassallo As anger grows at the Electoral Commission’s decision to impose different conditions for the registration of foreign voters MaltaToday can reveal that even citizens who had formally re-registered to vote within the March 31 deadline have been denied their voting documents.
Iain Sims, an EU citizen who has been residing in Malta these last four years, was among the 966 enrolled non-Maltese voters who did not receive his voting document this week, despite having met all the conditions imposed on foreigners by the Electoral Commission.
These same conditions are now being questioned by the European Parliament's representation to Malta, which has written to Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi about the issue.
Of the 966 EU citizens who registered for the 2004 elections, Sims was among the few who re-applied for inclusion in the 2009 register within the stipulated deadline.
A copy of the receipt issued by the Electoral Commission (left) clearly bears the date 11 March 2009 – 20 days before the deadline formally elapsed on the 31st.
But when voting documents were distributed this week, the police brought documents for Sim’s wife – a Maltese citizen – for not for Sims himself. When he enquired why he had not received any voting documents, he was told that his name had been deleted from the register. “My reaction when I was informed that the police had my wife’s voting card but not mine was one of disgust,” Sims told MaltaToday this week. “Having read about certain questionable practices that were going on, I had done my utmost to ensure that I was on the Electoral Register. With the suggestion that I had been removed even after registering in March, I was not at all happy.”
Sims eventually got his voting document, but his ordeal this week illustrates the sheer extent of the confusion and dilettantism that has engulfed the offices of the Electoral Commission at Evans Building in Valletta.
“I went into Valletta to the Electoral Office. I was immediately directed to someone called ‘Lewis’ who, when I explained the situation and showed him the acknowledgement, told me that I had to re-apply to be put on the register as I had been removed,” Sims explained. “I told Lewis that this was unacceptable as I had just re-applied in March. I was then directed to an office further down the hallway where Lewis explained that ‘dak ir-ragel’ had a complaint.”
Sims was subsequently told that he was indeed eligible to vote, and instructed to go directly to the St Julian’s police station to pick up his voting document in person.
“After arriving, a police constable entered the room and I explained what the electoral office had told me. I presented my ID card and the constable went back to checking his file. Once again, he found my wife’s details listed but not mine. I told him that this was a serious error as the Electoral Office had confirmed my status...”
Nor does the confusion end there.
“Before I left for Valletta, my wife had checked on some online government website to see if my ID was listed as eligible to vote. The site reported back in the affirmative,” Sims explained.
But a separate online search yielded the opposite result. “She then called a helpline that took her to Nationalist Party headquarters, and was informed that I was not entitled to vote...”
Such is the extent of uncertainty surrounding the issue that the European Parliament representation in Malta has now written to the Prime Minister to ask him to look into the matter.
“The Electoral Commission has decided to require non-Maltese citizens who were registered for the 2004 European Parliament Elections to re-register for the 2009 Elections. Those who have not have been stricken off the Register. The same has not been required of Maltese citizens,” representation head Dr Julian Vassallo wrote to Dr Gonzi yesterday. “It is difficult to reconcile both the decision to require re-registration as well as the decision to differentiate in such a manner between Maltese and non-Maltese citizens with Article 9(4) of Council Directive 93/109/EC of 6 December 1993 which lays down that:
“Community voters who have been entered on the electoral roll shall remain thereon, under the same conditions as voters who are nationals, until such time as they request to be removed or until such time as they are removed automatically because they no longer satisfy the requirements for exercising the right to vote.”
Vassallo called upon the Prime Minister to “do all that is in (his) power to ensure that no EU citizen resident in Malta willing and able to vote is incorrectly denied this basic political right.”
Electoral Engima
To date, the following questions remain unanswered:
• Why were different conditions imposed on foreign nationals, in clear breach of European Directive 93/109/EC?
• Why were the foreign nationals concerned not informed in writing before their removal from the register, as stipulated by the General Elections Act (Chapter 354, Laws of Malta)?
• Why did the advertisements by the Electoral Commission before March 31 not clearly state that the 966 voters registered in 2004 were expected to re-register?
• Why were people who did re-register also denied their voting documents, and made to collect them in person?
• Why does every source of information – including the Electoral Commission, the government website, the Malta Police Force and private help-lines like that provided by the Nationalist Party – supply contradictory information about the same electoral registry and registration process?
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