887 councillors collect vote for PN leadership election

Updatd at 8:09pm

Only 12 voting voting documents have not been collected, for tomorrow's PN leadership vote.

PN councillors eligible to vote in tomorrow's leadership election were being strongly urged by the party's higher echelons to collect their voting document and vote for Lawrence Gonzi, the only contestant in tomorrow's PN leadership vote, after up to 200 voting documents were still uncollected yesterday evening.

Party sources informed MaltaToday that councillors have received a number of SMSes and phone calls to collect their voting document from the party headquarters. Deputy prime minister Tonio Borg is personally calling individual councillors who have yet to collect their voting document and urging them to collect their vote.

Former minister Michael Refalo, the chairperson of the electoral commission overseeing the election, said there were 900 eligible voters in total. One councillor passed away this week, leaving 899 eligible voters.

The 12 votes which were not collected include four councillors who are overseas, another four who are ill, and another four simply did not collect the vote.

MaltaToday first requested the number of eligible voters on 31 January - although the PN has never replied to this newspaper's multiple requests - after it transpired that a number of PN sectional committees had not held any elections for councillors to represent them on the PN's General Council, the party's highest decision-making body.

In particular, the councillors representing the Sliema and St Julian's committees were not chosen by an election, because the number of 'contestants' did not exceed the number of councillor posts available, so an election was not required.

Last month, Lawrence Gonzi submitted his leadership of the PN to a secret ballot in a bid to consolidate his leadership after his government was threatened by a no-confidence vote, in which Nationalist backbencher Franco Debono abstained.

To retain the party leadership - which he is expected to - he will need a two-thirds majority of all votes cast.