Siġġiewi ghost voters: Court of appeal denies Labour request to be admitted to case

The Court of Appeal in its superior jurisdiction has rejected the governing Labour Party’s request to be admitted to the Siġġiewi ghost voters case.

The case was filed by the Nationalist Party (PN) over the alleged abusive use of declared residential addresses for political gain.

It was just last month that the PN had announced the filing of 99 cases, requesting the reversal of registrations of voters at a Siġġiewi building that was still under construction. 

Today, Chief Justice Mark Chetcuti, together with judges Christian Falzon Scerri and Josette Demicoli dismissed an appeal filed by Labour against a magistrate’s decision to reject its request to be admitted into four of those cases. The judgement’s effect on other cases where the party had successfully been admitted into the proceedings is not clear.

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Nationalist Party secretary general Michael Piccinino had described the case as the systematic misuse of government housing and resources to gerrymander the upcoming local council elections.

In the 2019 local council elections Labour had won Siġġiewi for the first time since local elections started being held in the mid-1990s, with a razor-thin 70-vote advantage.

READ ALSO: Magistrate inspects Siġġiewi housing block in ghost voters case