Faulty electoral counting earns denied MP €76,000 in taxpayers’ cash

The former Nationalist MP Edwin Vassallo, who failed to be elected in the last 2022 elections, has been awarded €76,000 in “lost earnings” by a court, after being denied parliamentary representation between 2013 and 2016 due to a faulty counting process in the 2013 general elections.

Vassallo, a social conservative MP who speaks out against progressive civil liberties, filed his claim against the Electoral Commission and the Attorney General in 2019 after the Constitutional Court granted the Nationalist Party two extra parliamentary seats it had been denied in the 2013 elections, three years later in 2016.

The two new seats were eventually awarded to Vassallo and former MP Peter Micallef. Both Vassallo and Micallef would enjoy only a few months in the House before its dissolution for the May 2017 elections.

The court said the Electoral Commission had not supervised the electoral process in the way required by the Constitution, in an error that had prejudiced Vassallo by depriving him of his seat in the House at a cost of lost earnings of €76,000.

Vassallo was elected to the House for the PN in six consecutive outings since 1996 to 2022, and also served as parliamentary secretary for small business in Nationalist cabinets.