Pro divorce lobby complains of unfair representation in counting hall

Pro-divorce lobby Moviment Iva will have its presence during the referendum counting process limited to monitors standing behind the perspex separator “only if there is space” or in the area outside the internal counting zone.

Labour MP Evarist Bartolo said the movement intends to protest the decision, claiming it has been denied the possibility to have representatives monitoring the voting process, the sealing of the ballot boxes, their transport, and to appoint assistant electoral commissioners and counting agents.

“It is an unacceptable circumstance,” Bartolo said. “We have been given constitutional advice that since our movement includes two MPs, we deserve a better representation during the electoral process… it is humiliating.”

Bartolo said the decision, which was taken on 27 April, is all the more relevant in the light of how certain voting documents were misplaced under questionable circumstances. “If the electoral commission had decided to simply take over all electoral preparations and processes itself, we would have had no problem,” he said.

But given that the parties will not be involved as with any other election, Bartolo said it was exceptionally unfair given that the PN has taken a clear stand against divorce and will be appointing its own AECs, while Labour has no official stand on the matter.

“I also have information that the PN is telling its representatives that it will supporting the ‘no’ lobby during the counting process,” he said.

The Electoral Commission had announced it will receive requests from “bona fide organisations and groups” who wish to observe the counting of ballot papers for the 28 May divorce referendum.

The decision effectively allows the Moviment Iva ghad-Divorzju and the Moviment Zwieg bla Divorzju to have representatives in the area usually provided for candidates and agents in the building where counting of ballot papers takes place.

Asked by MaltaToday on why the Moviment Iva chose to use a highly pejorative term for children born out of wedlock (bgħula) in their billboard campaign when this had no legal ‘consequence’, Moviment IVA chairperson Dr Deborah Schembri said the movement intended to use it for "shock value".

“We wanted to annoy people by using the world,” she said, to make them aware of the negative conditions that some children are finding themselves in, refuting claims that the use of the word somehow victimises children.

She said that terms such as ‘children born out of wedlock’ only “sugar coat” the situation that children are finding themselves in when they are born to parents who are bound by previous marriages. “We want people to realise the situation that these children are left in,” she said.

Schembri also hit out at the anti-divorce lobby for reacting strongly to the language. “It would be far better to work so that the conditions these children live in are eliminated, rather than opposing the choice of wording that says it like it is,” she said.

Amendments to Malta’s Referendum Act in 2002 – a year before the EU referendum – gave the Nationalist and Labour Parties exclusive privileges in the political supervision of all stages of preparation and conduct of the 28 May divorce referendum: including the automatic right to field Assistant Commissioners.

The upshot is that only the ‘two parties represented in parliament’ can take an active role in all logistical aspects of the referendum process: including monitoring the actual vote-count.

With one of the two parties concerned (the PN) having adopted an anti-divorce position, and the other (Labour) remaining non-committal on the issue, this effectively means that there will be no representation of the Yes lobby at any stage of the divorce referendum at all.