Accusations of internal vote rigging against Nationalist Party top official Jean Pierre Debono to sway an internal vote at the PN executive council his way and make it to Parliament, have given Adrian Delia a new, massive blow to his already waning support as party leader.

However, although these latest reports have “shocked” the electorate, internal vote rigging and manoeuvring inside political parties is not new.

The JPD case

Amid an already tense atmosphere following the disastrous MEP election for the PN last month, its Executive Committee met to decide who was to be co-opted to Parliament following the resignation of MP David Stellini. 

During the meeting at the party headquarters, a secret vote was taken to choose between Kevin Cutajar, who was next in line for the vacated 13th district seat, or Jean Pierre Debono who, despite being elected to Parliament in 2017, decided to let go so that Dr Delia could become an MP after his election as PN leader.

Following the vote, the PN announced that Mr Debono was to be co-opted after winning the ballot 42 votes in favour and 40 against. Both Mr Debono and his wife Kristy, also an MP, took part in the vote.

However, while no one raised objections as to who was eligible for the vote during the meeting of the executive, a few hours later news started making the rounds that the election could have been ‘vitiated’ as two voters, Mr Stellini and party treasurer David Camilleri, took part in the ballot despite that they did not have a right to vote according to the statute.

The issue came to a head on Sunday evening when the PN’s Executive president Mark Anthony Sammut, who had resigned after the meeting, declared that the election was “vitiated” and null. The Gozo PN arm had already requested Dr Delia and secretary general, Clyde Puli, to nullify the vote taken.

In a more serious accusation, Mr Sammut published an electronic document with the list of PN executive voters which, he claimed, was passed on to him by Mr Debono as the PN’s political coordinator, showing its author as Jean Pierre Debono, and accused him of rigging the vote.

Debono refutes accusations

On his part, Mr Debono refuted the accusations and said he had nothing to do with the preparations of the voting list. However, he did not deny that two voters, who cast their vote, were not eligible to take part.

JPD already had a warning

In September 2017, soon after Dr Delia’s election, beating his rival Chris Said with an 800-vote difference from the almost 15,000 tesserati who cast their vote, claims started making the rounds that some voters participated in the leadership contest without having the right according to the party statute. 

A report was leaked to the media pointing at Mr Debono’s handling of proxy votes in the leadership election, accusing him of collecting a member’s voting document through a proxy issued without the voter’s consent.

The member had said the signature on the proxy was not his.

When summoned to defend himself before the PN electoral commission, Mr Debono denied forging any signatures but admitted to having used proxies so that sectional committees could collect voting documents on behalf of members unable to do so themselves – an act the electoral commission criticised as a “ruse”.

In a decision on the case, after Dr Delia became leader, the party’s new Administrative Council said that it had accepted a written apology by Mr Debono in which he pledged to play no part in other party electoral processes to be held that year.

It nevertheless gave Mr Debono a public warning about his actions and said that the party would not tolerate any abuse in its electoral processes.

Former Cospicua mayor Pawlu Muscat addressing the media.

Labour’s vote rigging claims

Mr Spiteri's allegations made the front page of The Sunday Times back in September 2000.

The latest claims involving the top echelons of the PN are identical to those which hit the headlines in 2000, when the late former Labour leadership contestant, Lino Spiteri, divulged a story of alleged vote rigging in his 1992 leadership contest with Alfred Sant.

In his The Sunday Times of Malta column, Mr Spiteri had alleged that he was told by Labour activist and former Cospicua mayor (now deceased) Pawlu Muscat how he was given 150 votes from two Alfred Sant campaigners to stuff into the ballot boxes at Labour headquarters to sway the leadership election in favour of Dr Sant.

The story, a blow to the then-Labour leader clinging to his post despite electoral defeats, stirred a massive controversy, putting Dr Sant’s leadership under renewed strain.

However, despite admitting that it was true that he had recounted this story to many party stalwarts following the 1992 Labour leadership election, including to Mr Spiteri himself, Mr Muscat told a party disciplinary board later that he had made up the story to spite Mr Spiteri.

At the time, Labour had decided that there was no evidence of vote rigging in the 1992 contest, but expelled Mr Muscat from the party.

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