PN to withdraw billboards

The Nationalist Party will be taking down its billboards after a court on Friday rejected a fresh request by the opposition to stop the authorities from enforcing a legal notice banning billboards with political messages.

In a statement issued in response to the decision, the PN said that the party would respect the court’s decision despite the fact that it considered the legal notice as “muzzling” and “stifling” of the opposition’s message. It further noted that the court’s decision would also have a direct impact on businesses which had been affected by new financial obligations.

The PN has also presented a motion in parliament to revoke the legal notice.

In a decision, delivered from chambers last Friday, judge Joseph R. Micallef presiding the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional jurisdiction, dismissed the PN’s request, holding that he had not been shown that conditions warranting the injunction existed.

While the court was in no doubt that if no injunction was granted to prevent the removal of the billboards, these would likely be removed; there was also no doubt that their removal would not result in irremediable prejudice, as required for such an injunction.

Neither could it be said that without the 20 billboards, the PN would be prevented from spreading its political message.

The PN had filed for the injunction, against the removal of its billboards, on 1st June moments after a judge had revoked a similar injunction it had filed.

Judge Anthony Ellul had upheld an application filed by the Planning Authority and Transport Malta calling for the revocation of the original injunction, on the grounds that the PN had failed to follow-up its injunction with a court case within the 20 days stipulated at law.

No sooner was this decision given, however, that the PN filed a second request for an injunction, together with an urgent Constitutional application asking the court to halt the billboards' removal.

The original injunction had been upheld last month, a judge ruling that the Nationalist Party had good reason to refuse to remove its billboards, after a sudden change in the governing regulations.

Under a hotly contested legal notice issued on April 3rd, political billboards were only allowed to erect billboards three months before an election. Licence fees of €1500 - the rate applicable to commercial billboards - would be applied to billboards erected outside that period.

The PN argued in court that the charges it would incur as a result would run up to about €30,000, effectively muzzling it and stifling its freedom of expression.