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maltatoday, SUNDAY, 29 MAY 2016 4 News 'Constitutional Court must decide case' MIRIAM DALLI THE allocation of additional seats in parliament should be decided by the Constitutional Court, Alternattiva Demokratika secretary general Ralph Cassar has told MaltaToday. "The issue of additional seats, or not, for the Nationalist Party is an extremely complicated and highly technical case. That is why the case should be decided once and for all by the highest court, which in our system is the Con- stitutional Court," Cassar said, when contacted for a comment. "Despite the attempts of the PN to depict it as straightforward and simple, or Labour's [Glenn] Bedingfield to attribute ulterior motives to the courts, the issue of additional seats for the PN is an extremely complicated and highly technical one," Cassar said. He was referring to a blog by the OPM aide who suggested that the judge had allowed her political sympathies to cloud her judgement. While the Prime Minister said Bedingfield's com- ments were "uncalled for", Joseph Muscat's consultant insisted that he respected the court's deci- sion and had simply stated a fact when he recalled that Schembri Orland had contested the 1992 election on the PN ticket. The PN this week was awarded by Ms Justice Schembri Orland two additional seats in parlia- ment. Presiding the First Hall of the Civil Court in its constitu- tional jurisdiction, Justice Lor- raine Schembri Orland upheld the PN's arguments in its case contesting the result of the last election. As a result, the court said, the PN should be given two addi- tional seats. However, the government has said that it disagrees with the court's decision because of "Con- stitutional implications" and will be filing an appeal. The Labour Party will also be filing an appeal. Although the Electoral Com- mission has yet to decide its course of action, informed sources told Mal- taToday that the commission is set to appeal. Questions have also been raised as to whether the First Hall of the Civil Court, in its con- stitutional juris- diction, could have ordered the award of two additional seats. Sources have argued that such a decision falls un- der the remit of the Constitutional Court. Attempts by Mal- taToday to get comments from four constitutional experts proved to be futile. While one expert said he wished not to com- ment, so as not to prejudice the ap- peal, the three oth- ers said they did not have time to study the judge- ment well. Cassar argued that the elector- al law already catered for con- testing election results. "First of all there is the possi- bility of asking for a recount at each of the counting stages of the process – something which the armies of PN, and PL, offi- cials who monitor the Electoral Commission's counting staff could have easily done. Second- ly the law allows a possibility of an appeal in court of the elec- tion results within three days of their official publication. This is something which the PN actu- ally did, and lost," Cassar said. "It doesn't make sense to pro- long the contestation of election results and the three-day time- frame is more than enough." Last year, the Constitutional Court annulled a previous deci- sion by the First Hall of the Civil Court, when the court had ruled in favour of the PN and the com- mission was ordered to award two additional seats. Labour had then won the case when it argued that it should have been included as a party to the original case. The case was sent back to the First Hall to be heard again. The First Hall of the Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction then declared that "shortcom- ings in the process" in the 8th and 13th districts were in breach of the European Convention. The court has now found that PN MP Claudette Buttigieg had been deprived of her right to be elected by quota, after a batch of 50 votes were mistakenly found in the pigeon hole of another PN candidate. "Some PN candidates are ban- dying figures about, of how the PN deserves more seats – when in fact the correction factor which is used to 'correct' the re- sult and bring up the number of seats in Parliament to 69 instead of 65 – would have been com- pletely different," the AD secre- tary general said. "In fact, the PN had already been given these extra seats. The irony of this is that all this hul- labaloo is being raised because of a mistake in the counting of 50 votes. They want two extra seats for 50 votes and speak about proportionality and democracy. At the same time, they obviously ignore AD's 5,500 votes in the 2013 general election," he said. AD did not elect a candidate in the election. In 2007, amendments to the law established that the winning margin in an election was to be reflected in the margin of seats obtained. If the winning party obtains a majority of 10,000 votes but only a majority of one seat, additional seats are added to reflect the winning margin. This is also done vice versa when the winning margin is of 3,000 votes however the margin in the seats is much more than the margin of votes. Here seats are added to the opposition party so as to reflect the margin of defeat. The electoral law only guarantees proportionality for the big parties, Ralph Cassar (inset) said Additional seats in parliament: