The PN electoral commission has told paid-up members, lifetime or otherwise, that it has the ‘absolute right’ to choose who is eligible to vote in the party leadership elections, in a standard reply after a number of persons asking why they were refused. This came after revelations by The Malta Independent that a number of paid-up members (tesserati) were unable to collect their voting document after discovering that their names were absent from the registry.

Sources told the newsroom that they were up in arms and angry at the way they have been treated by the Nationalist Party, after they were informed that were no longer lifetime members of the party without any form of explanation.

“We were involved with the party who fought for freedom of expression and the right to democracy in the 1980s; now the party has become hijacked by anti-democratic people,” sources said.

The reply sent to sources by the electoral commission read as follows:

 “According to the party statute, which was amended this June, Article 7, the electoral commission has the absolute right to consider who is eligible to vote and who is not for the party leader election. The commission has also noticed that you are no longer a lifetime member,” a letter read.

Previously, when pressed on the issue surrounding the removal of lifelong members, a PN spokesperson denied the claims, insisting that any lifelong members are still on the registry, unless they personally removed themselves from the party.

On Monday, the commission would tell the newsroom that members who are yet to renew their membership have until Wednesday(today) at 6pm to renew their membership and thus become eligible to vote and a voting document is issued in their name for collection on  Thursday which is the last day when voting documents can be collected.

The Commission, however, failed to explain the reason why some lifelong members were being denied the right to vote.

Jean Pierre Debono & the membership database

This newsroom also contacted Assistant Secretary General of the Nationalist Party Jean Pierre Debono who is responsible for the database containing PN members and has been so since 2008 to ascertain whether an administrative blunder was at fault for the removal.

Debono, who confirmed that a number of individuals had already begun calling the party’s headquarters, was insistent that any errors of involving lifetime members that were absent from the voting registry, who are on the database, were squarely on the shoulders of the electoral commission.

“If a paid-up member has a card, and is registered on the database, there is an issue with the commission. These individuals are entitled to a vote and will have it granted to them.”

Debono encouraged any paid-up PN members, lifetime or otherwise, who are absent for the voting registry for the upcoming leadership election to contact PN headquarters to ascertain their status within the party and whether or not they appear on the party’s database.

“People, who held either a card or where on the database, have already called and we have remedied the situation.”

He admitted that he had conducted an exercise to see whether there were any errors within the database which yield 3 separate errors, all of which dated back to the early 1990s.

“There were 3 lifetime members who were registered as annual members. This was remedied immediately.”

The leadership election, which is between MP Chris Said and newcomer Adrian Delia, is due to take place on this coming Saturday, 16 September and have some 22,000 voters are eligible to vote

The commission also released a statement saying all those eligible to vote can do so; however once again it failed to answer why a number of lifetime members were removed from the party list without any explanation or notification, as the original article had stated.