Fighting for everyone

In the coming months at least 1,648 people are going to be summoned to court to defend their right to vote. That appears to be the Labour Party's harvest for the coming European parliament elections. It will probably be twice that number when the Nationalist Party file their own objections to voters registered on the last electoral register.

The approximately 3,000 cases are heard by magistrates who have to put off their normal workload to deal with them in time. The police have 3,000 more summonses to deliver, court registrars are busy, 3,000 people take a morning off to attend court.

It costs political parties almost nothing to file an objection while the people who pay through their noses to seek justice on more substantial issues suffer even more delay because of yet another manifestation of political hysteria.

Nobody believes that the PN and MLP are carrying out a public service. Is it conceivable that they would object to the registration of one of their own supporters? They do their best to eliminate as many as possible of their opponents. The question is how can they tell?

Regardless of the Data Protection Act, political parties, other than the Green Party, maintain a database of all Maltese voters, each neatly marked red, blue, don't know. We live in a strange Orwellian democracy, each of us monitored, labelled and tucked away in a political party computer.

It is more remarkable in this election that so many objections are filed because every EU citizen or Maltese resident in an EU country can choose to vote in Malta. What will the MLPN be objecting to? Can there be so many people who have been declared insane, convicted or dead who have escaped the scrutiny of the electoral commission?

I learn with envy of countries which allow their citizens to vote by mail or at their embassies abroad. When are we to extend the right to vote to everyone with sufficient interest in the fate of the country to want to vote?

When Arnold Cassola was summoned to defend his right to vote in the last election it was a new experience for me to witness a judicial outrage of such magnitude. I watched while I waited our turn.

It appeared that the process had been going on for months: PN and MLP lawyers seemed jaded by the numbers. They had sheaves of papers before them, computer printouts. The voters were third parties in the proceedings. The majoritarian parties object, the electoral commission defends the registration and the magistrates decide. The voter is just a witness.

If he or she does not turn up goodbye voting rights. The speed and superficiality of the proceedings is nothing short of remarkable. I watched while a policeman reported to the magistrate that the voter was not found at the address in question and that neighbours had told him that the person in question had moved. Moved where? Since when is hearsay reliable? The voter was zapped. He or she may have moved down the road or to the next village not Timbuctoo. Never mind, another one off the list.

There was a feeling of tit-for-tat between the PN and MLP. Sometimes one side did not insist, sometimes the other. Sometimes insistence was not on the matter in hand but in retaliation for previous insistence on another case. People lost their voting rights on the flimsiest of pretexts for the PN to get its own back on the MLP or vice-versa. I have rarely felt so deeply disgusted.

Arnold was entitled to vote in the EU referendum because he was a registered voter on the day when the referendum was called. That was what the law required, that was what allowed him to vote. The MLP were outraged and his delight in waving his voting document in their faces as he went in to vote nearly caused a riot.

His right to vote in the election had been challenged because the MLP suspected that he had been abroad more than six months in the 18 months prior to the election. They could not prove it and Arnold got to vote and stand for election. To some people it felt like cheating. The MLP certainly felt they had been cheated. We had been more legalistic than they were. We had beaten them at their favourite game of legal nitpicking.

It was much more. Thanks to the MLP attempt to eliminate Arnold, a constitutional case was filed alleging a breach of his fundamental human rights. The court found that there had been no discrimination, apparently the court chose to believe that the PN and MLP do not discriminate when eliminating voters. However, it pronounced a milestone judgment nonetheless.

Since the Cassola case it is no longer necessary to prove physical presence in Malta for six months during the 18 months prior to an election. The court made it amply clear that the presence required is not to be computed simply by looking at somebody's passport and totting up the days. The person's intentions are crucial. Did he or she maintain a habitual link with Malta? Travelling salesmen, students, businessmen and emigrant workers remain entitled to vote in elections if Malta remains their habitual residence, the place where their family lives, where they expect to return. It is a sane judgment, a fair interpretation of the Constitution. Thanks to Arnold's defence of his basic political rights it is available to every Maltese citizen.

The burden of proof on the objecting parties is now much greater: they have to show that any absence they can prove is evidence of a detachment from Malta, a sign that Malta did not remain the voter's habitual residence. It will not be easy.

Alternattiva Demokratika is not just another name. It displays our commitment to radical democracy, our defence of voters' rights no matter whom they support. In 14 years we have never objected to a single voter's registration. The nonchalance with which other parties attempt to deny voters their basic rights continues to shock us. We find the recurrent voter elimination carnival outrageous.

We are more than pleased that we have put a spanner in the works of the voter eliminators through the judgment of the constitutional court. Anybody receiving a summons challenging his or her right to vote would do well to look it up: Dr Harry Vassallo vs Principal Electoral Commissioner 21.03.03. It could be anyone of us next. We would be glad to help anybody.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt