PN wins all cases related to Siggiewi voter fraud

The Nationalist Party has won all 99 cases it brought related to what has been described a voter fraud in Siggiewi, justice spokesman Karol Aquilina said on Facebook on Friday.

The cases were heard by 22 magistrates in the last three weeks.

Aquilina said that all the persons who were illegally and abusively registered to be living in a Siggiewi block which is still uninhabitable will have their address reversed to their previous place of residence.

In submitting its cases in court, the PN had accused the Labour Party of registering nearly 100 voters as residents at a housing complex in Siġġiewi which is still in shell form. The residents who were registered do not live in this government estate, the PN said.

Addressing a press conference outside the Valletta law courts, Nationalist Party secretary general Michael Piccinino had said this is the perfect example of how government uses housing and other resources to manipulate local council elections.

In 2019, Labour had won a majority in the Siġġiewi local council for the first time since local elections started being held with a mere 70-vote advantage.

“We have caught labour gerrymandering in Siġġiewi,” Piccinino had said, explaining that as of last month, nobody had been registered as living at the housing project in question. “The moment the President signed off on the election, suddenly 99 people were registered as living there.”

Prime Minister Robert Abela had defended Social Housing Minister Roderick Galdes in the wake of the Siġġiewi voter fraud, and blamed the Nationalist Party for inflicting this “martyrdom” onto the affected families. The PN had countered that the only person responsible was PM Abela.

Last week, a magistrate ordered the police to investigate and identify the public officials and entities who had manipulated voters into changing their address to a Siġġiewi construction site ahead of the upcoming local council and EU elections.

All the witnesses who testified in the court cases instituted by the Nationalist Party said that they do not live in Siggiewi.