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Now that Arnold Cassola is a member of the Italian Parliament, is he entitled to vote in the Maltese general elections?
This is the question most of us are asking and that everybody is hesitant to answer. We all remember when the Malta Labour Party decided to apply our electoral laws and take Cassola to court because he did not qualify as a voter according to our laws. But we all know what happened: the Electoral Office has no means to test the eligibility of a voter and Cassola testified on oath that he lost his passport and therefore the proof required by our Constitution that you have to be in Malta for at least six months for the past two years, could not be made. Not only that, but the tables were turned so that the accused became the Labour Party and Cassola the victim.
Now it is Cassola again in the picture and the authorities have to tell us from now what is the legal position of Cassola regarding his right to vote. Why wait for the fever of the electoral campaign when this is a national issue which applies not only to Cassola but also to all the Maltese who have a dual nationality? Let me be frank, the electoral register nowadays is a piece of crap because the place for our electoral laws nowadays is the paper basket. And Cassola knows it because he is determined to have one foot in Italy and one foot in Malta.
I personally cannot digest this even for credibility’s sake. Members of Parliament are members of parliament not only because they are elected by the people but because they swear allegiance to the Constitution of the country where they are elected. Now if Cassola has sworn allegiance to the Constitution of Italy, how can he vouch to be loyal to ours? Cassola is free to choose his allegiance but he is not free to share an allegiance between Malta and Italy. So the sooner we know if Cassola has a right to vote and to contest our general elections, the better.
But for the government, the problem on our electoral system is Gozo and hence it has laid before the Table of the House a proposed amendment of the Constitution so that Gozo will again become one electoral district, although the term used now is that of a ‘region’ for the sake of eligibility of EU funds. The political parties continue to disagree on any reform in the electoral laws and this disagreement is a cushy excuse so that both of them can continue to have the monopoly on the political situation in Malta.
There is no doubt that the electoral office and the Electoral Commission has been cut down to a mere organisation responsible for the supervision of the elections and to the issue of identity cards. Nowadays everybody who has a Maltese nationality and a Maltese address is issued with a Maltese identity card. No notice is any longer given to the criteria of eligibility according to our electoral laws. I know of Maltese who live and work abroad but who are on a long waiting list to do an operation in the country they live and who are being advised to have a Maltese identity card so that they can have the operation in Malta.
I am not against dual nationality. What I am against is that people who do not pay taxes in Malta are being allowed to vote and not allowed to savour any of the tax burdens of the party they have voted for. What I am against is that these people do not contribute to our health service and yet, they are entitled to free healthcare. Voting rights should no longer be considered on the basis of nationality only but on nationality and income tax number. Votes based solely on nationality are not votes in the national interest. They are purely political votes.
The dual nationals must also have residence in Malta to be able to vote. This is not a big deal because nowadays the definition of residence has been reduced to just the mere address of residence being on your identity card. There is no longer any regard to the criteria established by our law regarding residence and any Maltese national is now being issued with an identity card.
Even the candidates are having a field day in this respect. Choosing an electoral district or locality to contest the general or local elections is no longer the result of a sense of belonging but the result of a mathematical calculation. The electoral districts in Malta have proved to be only a divide between the political parties and between the candidates in the same party. I personally liked the idea introduced by Berlusconi in Italy that in the general elections you vote for the party and not for the candidate.
I am one of those who want to see the electoral districts scrapped and Malta becoming one electoral district and Gozo and Comino the other. I want to see that when people go to vote they vote for the party and not for the candidates. I want to see the winning party able to choose his Cabinet not necessarily from people who are elected. I want to see technocrats included in the list of Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries. I want to see a local council in every town and village and not the anomaly that exists right now whereby certain villages with two hundred residents are entitled to have a local council and other villages with the same number of residents are not. In other words, I want to see an end to the monopoly of these two major political parties.
There are other issues that the Electoral Commission must be concerned about. One of them is the issue of the premises for the counting of votes in the next general elections. At present no location has been identified for the conduct of this exercise and persistent rumours are saying that this can take place in the huge tent that a private contractor is setting up next to the Meridiana vineyards. But if these rumours are true, how safe is the location for the counting of votes? Is it fireproof? Is it big enough to allocate everybody? And at what cost?
Can anybody tell me if Cassola will be allowed to contest the next general elections? Will he be allowed to vote? And do we have a place for the counting of votes?
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