Sant submits names for electoral commission

Alfred Sant yesterday submitted to the prime minister the names of four people to represent the Labour Party on the electoral commission.

The term of office of the electoral commission expires shortly. It was appointed for a year towards the end of last August. It is usually appointed for three years, and no reason was given for the one-year duration of the appointment last year.

As it turned out, a referendum, on European Union membership, and a general election were held just months later.

The commission is made up of eight commissioners and a chief electoral commissioner, all of whom are nominated by the President acting on the advice of the prime minister, who would have consulted the leader of the opposition.

In June, 2001, Anna Mallia, Vincent Camilleri, Joe Buttigieg and Denis Cauchi, the four commissioners representing the MLP, had resigned claiming they were not convinced that the electoral register was being maintained, verified and updated as demanded by law. The MLP did not nominate new members and the prime minister went on to appoint others in their stead.

Dr Sant has proposed Dr Buttigieg and Salvu Fenech, Salvu Sant and Tony Sultana.

Dr Sant said in a statement yesterday that he had met Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami about the appointment of the electoral commission and he had repeated his objections about the operations of the commission.

Dr Sant said he had pointed out to the prime minister he had no confidence in the current chief electoral commissioner, Carmel Degabriele, both because of the way the electoral boundaries had been drawn up as well as because no remedy had been found, after the removal of the need for embarkation cards, to check whether people were entitled to vote.

Dr Sant said the electoral boundaries drawn up by the commission were unjust and this was clear by the election results which gave the Nationalist Party a far bigger parliamentary majority in proportion to the No. 1 votes the PN polled in the election.

The MLP has been talking of the need for some form of control on those eligible to vote since March, 1999, when the embarkation cards for Maltese going abroad were eliminated.

The outgoing commission, appointed on August 26 last year, is made up of George Borg Cardona, Victor Cavallo, Mario Callus, Ena Cremona, John De Gray, Henry Distefano, Vanni Ganado and Carmel J. Portelli.