Justice, Local Councils and Culture Minister Owen Bonnici denied the government was proposing to postpone the local council elections to save costs but said that it was mainly doing so to avoid election fatigue.

Speaking along Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government Stefan Buontempo at the Justice ministry today during the launch of the public consultation process tied to the government’s proposal to delay the local council elections, Dr Bonnici slammed reports which stated the government was proposing to delay elections to save money.

Dr Bonnici said so after being asked by a journalist why the government was contemplating to save costs for a democratic event, that of council elections, when it went on paying Valletta’s Café Premier over four million euros in a bail out.

The next local council elections are scheduled for March next year but there have been suggestions that these could be postponed for five years, something the Nationalist Party says undermines the concept of democracy.

Dr Bonnici said that the next round of elections is planned for next March however it now depends on the feedback of the public and a final decision will be taken by the government.

Dr Bonnici said that the government aims to take a decision as fast as possible following the consultation process but did not give an exact timeframe to when this would happen.

“As the next elections are in March, it is vital we take a decision as soon as the consultation ends,” he said.

Dr Bonnici strongly refuted suggestions that the postponement of council elections was connected in any way to the spring hunting referendum.

Meanwhile, Dr Buontempo said that a debate was started on whether local council elections should be delayed. In a bid to convince the population at large that it this would not be a first for council elections to be postponed, he said that it in the past local council elections were in fact postponed.

Dr Buontempo said that the consultation would tackle the issue to whether the term of councillors and mayors should be extended to seven years instead of the current five. It is being proposed that the elections would coincide with the EP elections in 2019.

The process kickstarted yesterday and ends on 27 September.

Asked by this newsroom whether delaying the elections would mean that certain councillors or mayors who are not delivering could go on doing so for a further two years, Dr Bonnici replied that in the past there were cases where the council was dissolved, referring to the Sliema local council.

The process is being done through email: [email protected].

The minister urged the public to participate in the consultation process.