Election Playbook: Protecting your Vitals

Back with a bang: It started off as a last-minute idea in 2022, the day after Robert Abela announced a snap election. We needed a way to engage readers and provide a light-hearted review of the day’s happenings. And every day during that campaign, we did just that through what we dubbed as the Election Playbook - a daily digest of what happened each day of the campaign. So, we’re doing it again for what hopes to be a more interesting election season. We’ll show you what the different parties and candidates are doing and saying, but we’ll also make space for more light-hearted content. Either way, we will be delivering the news straight to you, with the same wit and flair as last time.

Vitalisations: Labour’s holding a mass meeting on Workers’ Day. Joseph Muscat is being accused of wrongdoing. An election is happening in June. And no, it’s not 2017. Things took an interesting turn yesterday when it was confirmed in court that the magisterial inquiry into the sale of three public hospitals to Vitals Global Healthcare has been delivered to the Attorney General. No information on the outcome of the inquiry has emerged, but Robert Abela has taken a hostile stance on the matter, accusing the magistrate of purposely choosing the start of the election campaign to conclude her inquiry. Could this become the defining issue of this election campaign?

Make politics interesting again: Now for some actual election news. Submissions have closed for election candidates, meaning we now have a final list of people contesting the European and local council elections. The statistics, at least for the European ballot, show that we might be in a new age of Maltese politics. The number of candidates hailing from the Labour and Nationalist parties are at an all-time low this year, while the number of independent and third-party candidates are at an all-time high. Turnout is also expected to reach a record low. And could it be another ‘protest vote’ year? Nothing is off the table, and everyone has something to lose. For the first time in years, politics could get interesting again.

Good for the goose, good for the gerrymander: Call the Ghostbusters! It seems that a social housing site in Siġġiewi has 99 ‘ghost voters’ who have had their ID cards transferred to the address, despite the building not yet able to house people. Almost half of these voters currently live in Qormi, while 19 live in Siġġiewi and five in Luqa. Call it coincidence or call it fate (or electoral fraud?), but these three localities form part of the social housing minister’s electoral district. Why is this significant? In 2019, the Labour Party won a majority of seats on the Siġġiewi local council for the first time in local election history, obtaining only 70 votes more than the Nationalist Party. Maybe they’ll win the local council by 169 votes this time… #maltatodayspin

Candidate-watch: PN's David Casa issued a statement on Abela's comments criticising the judiciary. "The efforts of the judiciary to hold criminals to account and ensure that we are all equal under the law must not be subverted," he insisted. Roberta Metsola also criticised Abela, calling him predictable, pathetic, and adrift. ADPD's Sandra Gauci and Ralph Cassar met with Friends of the Earth Malta to discuss various issues. Labour's Clint Azzopardi Flores met with officials from the General Workers' Union.

What’s happening today?: It’s Workers’ Day, so the Labour and Nationalist parties are holding mass meetings in Valletta and Mosta respectively. The Labour Party promises a mass meeting full of fun and spectacle. The Nationalist Party is using the opportunity to launch its election campaign, with a speech from Roberta Metsola (and entertainment from Fabrizio Faniello and Mike Spiteri, among others…)