MLP supporters reluctant about voting in Euro election

The Labour Party will celebrate May 1, the day when Malta formally joins the European Union, with the traditional May Day celebrations, Alfred Sant said.

Introducing the four new candidates for the European Parliament election, Dr Sant said May 1 was one of the few days that was traditionally close to the MLP's heart and there was no reason not to celebrate it in the usual way.

The four new MLP candidates for the European election are Owen Bonnici, who formed part of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici's National Campaign for Independence (CNI), Robert Micallef, who often participated in activities by Dom Mintoff's Front Maltin Inqumu, Wenzu Mintoff, who had left the MLP to join Alternattiva and who is now back in the MLP fold, and former Labour minister Joe Debono Grech.

The new candidates join Glenn Bedingfield, Louis Grech, Joe Muscat and John Attard Montalto, bringing the MLP list to eight. The last four were approved by an MLP conference last November, when the other candidates did not obtain the 70 per cent required under the MLP statute.

Asked about an opinion expressed by Anna Mallia in l-Orizzont last week, who questioned whether the MLP was treating the European Parliament as a supreme institution for which one required a 70 per cent threshold, when candidates for the House of Representatives required only 60 per cent, Dr Sant said the difference was because in the general election, candidates contested a district where the number of votes was approximately one-thirteenth of the total number of votes, while for the election for the European Parliament, the whole of Malta and Gozo formed one district.

Dr Sant said a considerable number of Labour Party supporters were reluctant to vote in the European election and the party would be striving to convince them that it was in the workers' interests to vote.

The MLP would be holding a number of manifestations before the election, including on March 31 and May 1, he said.

Those elected on the MLP ticket would be aligning themselves with the European Socialists and the four approved last week would be going to Brussels like the ones approved in December.