[LIVE] PN narrowly reclaims St Paul’s Bay
Our live blog of the 2015 local councils elections from the counting hall in Naxxar: follow us here for constant updates • Munxar won by Labour for the first time • PN narrowly wins St. Paul's Bay back
Our live blog of the 2015 local councils elections from the counting hall in Naxxar: follow us here for constant updates • Munxar won by Labour for the first time • PN narrowly wins St. Paul's Bay back
The final councillors have been elected, with Maria Pia Bonnici, Mark Micallef, and Joseph Gatt getting elected to the Mosta local council on the Labour ticket.
Meanwhile, PN candidates Karl Tanti and Angele Rapa have been elected to the Mosta local council, after having inherited the majority of Francis Deguara’s votes. The PN have therefore won seven seats in the council, regaining their majority. Five PL candidates are still fighting for the three remaining Mosta seats.
After a tight battle, the PN have reclaimed St. Paul’s Bay, as Daniel Grima was elected as the PN’s seventh councilor on the council, beating PL candidate Rodney Grima by around 12 votes. PL candidates Matthew John Barbara and Mario Buhagiar were also elected.
Despite ten out of 13 candidates being elected, both parties are still fighting for the majority of seats in the local council.
PN candidate Francis Deguara is the next candidate to be eliminated. The majority of his votes are expected to be inherited by the two remaining PN candidates, namely Karl Tanti and Angele Rapa.
PN candidates Edward Torpiano and Rebecca Micallef have been eliminated, with the majority of their votes being transferred to PN candidates. Next to be eliminated will be Labour’s Mario Buhagiar.
This result means that only two local councils remain undecided: Mosta and St Paul’s Bay. Mosta will once again have a Nationalist majority after it garnered 52% of the votes, while the majority in St Paul’s Bay remains up for grabs with both parties resting heavily on the prospect of inheriting cross-party votes.
Surprisingly, however, the mood inside the counting hall is subdued and quiet with both party officials remaining entrenched at counting agents. Party officials say that the counting process in Mosta and St Paul’s Bay is expected to be completed in the next few hours, while a Labour supporter jokingly predicted that the timing of the final results will coincide with Labour’s celebration at 10am.
A brief recap of the situation in St Paul’s Bay: The PN garnered 3,701 first count votes, 62 more than the Labour Party. After the surplus of votes of those candidates elected on the first count were distributed to the second preference candidate, the difference in votes remained less than 100 as there was little cross party voting. The candidates with the least number of votes were then eliminated and the votes were redistributed according to voters’ preference.
The final composition of the Paola local council is as follows: Steven Axisa (PL), Dominic Grima (PL), Bernard Lynch (PL), Nicholas Seychell (PL), Roderick Spiteri (PL), Ivan Bartolo (PN), and Tyrone Muscat (PN). Dominic Grima is the new mayor.
The first to go was Evgeniya Sharkova: the majority of her 37 first-count votes were gobbled up by fellow independent candidate Eman Micallef with the Labour and PN candidates inheriting a meager nine votes.
A glimmer of hope for the counting agents and electoral supervisors as the counting process in Hamrun is now closed. A last-ditch mass inheritance of votes by PN candidate Efrem Buttigieg ensured that the Nationalist Party has three seats in the seven-seat council. The councilors are: Vince Bonello (PL), Carmen Borg (PL), Jurgen Grixti (PL), Christian Sammut (PL), Efrem Buttigieg (PN), Antonello Cuschieri (PN) and Louise Portelli (PN). Christian Sammut is the new mayor.
Elsewhere, in St Paul’s Bay, the Labour Party and the PN remain neck and neck in the battle to obtain the majority of seats. The surplus votes of David Thake – 84 in total – have now been distributed to the second preference candidates. The votes were all equally distributed amongst Thake’s fellow PN candidates, with Anne Marie Fenech inheriting a modest 13 votes.
Nadur also brought an end to counting in Gozo. A total of 40 candidates were elected in eight different local councils in Gozo, with the PN edging out 22 total councilors to the 18 councilors elected on the Labour ticket. But notwithstanding the PN’s slight majority in councilors, the Labour Party registered an increase in voting in Ghajnsielem, Munxar, Qala, Nadur, Xaghra, Zebbug and Kercem. On the other hand, the PN gained more votes in San Lawrenz, which in turn translated into an additional seat in the council.
Meanwhile, counting in St Paul’s Bay remains on a knife-edge as the majority in votes is constantly changing hands between the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party. If PN manages to garner a majority foothold in the council, Graziella Galea would be mayor, whereas if the Labour Party were to garner the majority of voting, Alfred Grima would become mayor.
Paul Bugeja (PL), Mandy Buhagiar (PL), Alfred Grima (PL), incumbent mayor Raymond Tabone (PL), Graziella Galea (PN), and David Thake (PN) have so far been elected in St Paul’s Bay. There is however a long night ahead for party officials and electoral commissioners as seven candidates have yet to be elected.
The new mayors are Sarah Agius (PL) in Haz-Zebbug, Davina Sammut (PL) in Floriana, Carmen Said (PL) in Munxar, Sandro Azzopardi (PL) in Dingli, Joe Casha (PL) in Isla, Christian Sammut (PL) in Hamrun, Terence Ellul (PL) in Santa Lucija, Kevin Barun (PL) in Birzebbuga, Horace Gauci (PL) in Marsaxlokk, Conrad Borg Mache (PL) in Gzira, Domenic Grima (PL) in Paola, Giljan Aquilina (PN) in Gharghur, Karl Gouder (PN) in St Julian’s, Ian Spiteri (PN) in Balzan, Edwin Vassallo (PN) in Mosta, Noel Formosa (PN) in San Lawrenz, Franco Ciangura (PN) in Ghajnsielem and Edward Said (PN) in Nadur.
In a few words, this is what happens: the surplus of votes of those candidates elected on the first count are distributed to the second preference candidate. If in the following count, following the addition of the surplus, no candidate is elected, the candidate with the least amount of votes is eliminated and his votes and redistributed according to voters’ preference. When the surplus from the votes of elected candidate is redistributed, the candidates inherit a proportion.
“Today’s results have been a lesson in how every political party won … and we have won too,” Cassola quipped.
Read the full report here
“Labour one but the reduction in votes in localities with a PL majority can’t be ignored. This haemorrhage of votes has to be stopped: listen to your own people, uphold your promises, control individuals within the party who are becoming arrogant, remain close to the people and stop ridiculing and insulting Simon Busuttil and the PN,” Cuschieri said.
He went on to add that his was constructive criticism and hoped that his appeal doesn’t fall on deaf ears.
Five seats are to be elected in Dingli, where Labour obtained a 68.16% majority and PN registered 31.84%. Candidates elected so far are Rachel Powell (PL), Sandro Azzopardi (PL), Raymond Schembri (PL) and David Vassallo (PN).
"The public gave us a majority of 54%," he said, adding that the Labour Party repeatedly confirmed its comfortable and solid majority with the electorate.
Busuttil says “The PN is back in business… We have halved Labour’s margin confirming that the route we set out on was the correct one.”
“The PN’s result has to be taken in its own context. The margin between both parties has fallen from the 17% of 2012… the PN has increased its vote counts and percentages in various localities, and decreased its vote share in Gozo. One has to analysis the reasons for these changes.
“We did not go into these elections with a presumption that we’d win the absolute majority – this is a positive development but we keep a sense of realism, there is still a lot of work to be done, in Gozo too.”
So far, it looks like Labour has a strong showing in Gozo with only San Lawrenz registering a drop in support.
Meanwhile, Labour has retained its majority in Safi and Xaghra.
Voter turnout in Kirkop this year was of 79%.
Six candidates – two for Labour and four for the PN – contested the election. Five councillors have to be elected. 495 votes were cast and the quota to be met is of 77. 39 votes were dubious.
Joseph Muscat said he wanted to win these elections “even by a vote” while the PN had been more tongue-tied over their expectations arguing that “the PL was starting off with a 17% majority”. In 2012, the PN obtained 40.7% compared with Labour's 57.3%.
Voter turnout has increased from 59% in 2012 to 68% last Saturday. The turnout, coupled with the referendum on spring hunting, however raised several assumptions of where the votes are going. Localities such as Attard registered an increase in local councils’ voter turnout, but so did pro-hunting localities also known to be labour strongholds.
Sorting of the ballot sheets has kicked off after which counting will immediately start in the individual localities.
34 localities took part in these elections with the Nationalist Party fielding 185 candidates, Labour with 177 candidates and AD fielded seven candidates.