Updated | PN to file writs to strike off IIP citizens from electoral register

PN says sample of 100 IIP citizens reveals how the absolute majority were given right to vote without having spent six months in the last 18 months

Citizenship incurs an automatic right to vote, but actually voting in an election requires that the voter spent six months in the 18 months preceding an election.
Citizenship incurs an automatic right to vote, but actually voting in an election requires that the voter spent six months in the 18 months preceding an election.

The Nationalist Party is going to ask for beneficiaries of the Individual Investor Programme who have been included in the electoral register, to be struck off from the register because they had not yet resided for an aggregate six months in the last 18 months.

Malta’s electoral law allows citizens to vote in an election only if they have fulfilled minimum residency requirements. The IIP citizens only recently acquired their Maltese citizenship for €650,000. Citizenship incurs an automatic right to vote, but actually voting in an election requires that the voter spent six months in the 18 months preceding an election.

The PN deputy leader for party affairs Beppe Fenech Adami said that an exercise carried by the PN on a sample of 100 IIP citizens shows that these registered citizens had been included in the latest electoral register.

 “A number of people who don’t have the right to vote have, in the most abusive and corrupt manner have been given the right to vote. Applicants have an application form where they’re asked whether they have dual citizenship, and whether they have resided for at least six months in Malta,” Fenech Adami said.

Maltese political parties are allowed at law to ask that voters who do not feel Constitutional requisites or are mentally infirm, or have passed away recently, be struck off the electoral register.

But Fenech Adami accused the government of buying votes and described Labour as “a threat to democracy”.

Fenech Adami said that a Russian national who had not spent 180 days in the last year and a half had acquired the right to vote. Another applicant, a Chinese national, declared they had lived in Malta since 16 years of age, but the rest of their application was left empty and they had still acquired the right to vote. He said some other applications were unsigned, lacked a date or didn’t have a witness signature.

“Once again the Electoral Office, an entity that is under the responsibility of the Prime Minister has been caught up in a scandal. Muscat’s government sells citizenship and buys votes,” Fenech Adami said. “These are not mistakes but a plan by an Office that falls under the OPM.”

Fenech Adami said the Electoral Office had to answer for the shortcomings.

In a reaction, the Justice Ministry – responsible of Identity Malta – accused the Opposition of forging ahead with its “destructive attitude” against the IIP and commented that despite “accusations of secrecy, the opposition still managed to identify the applicants”.

It went on to add that the only secret scheme was that of the PN’s loan scheme.

The ministry said that the Individual Investor Program was the only programme to be approved by the European Commission.

It also argued that it was the courts, and not politicians, who decided on the right of voting in the case of individuals who have not resided in Malta according to the period stipulated by the constitution.

“[The opposition] also knows that the IIP is overseen by an independent regulator appointed in agreement with both sides of the House.”