Lawyers clash over IIP citizens’ voting rights

Lawyers have clashed over the striking off from the electoral register of persons who acquired their Maltese passport under the Individual Investor Programme.

Before Magistrate Claire Stafrace, Prof. Ian Refalo who is representing the Electoral Commission in these proceedings, argued that in such cases it was agreed that these citizens had been granted the voting rights by mistake. The Electoral Commission would be deleting them from the voting register.

But this was immediately objected to by lawyers from the Nationalist Party. Lawyer Paul Borg Olivier pointed out that any requests for deletions or additions to the electoral register could only be made by a court vested with such powers.

This would constitute a “dangerous precedent”, Borg Olivier said.

The court will continue hearing submissions on 12 July.

The PN filed its case against the Electoral Commission in order to delete new citizens who acquired their passports under the IIP, which sells citizenship for €650,000, who were added to the electoral register without having spent a minimum of six months in Malta over the past 18 months before the publication of the register.