Tonio Borg's vacant seat to be filled by 5 December

Nominations for the casual election to fill the vacant Parliamentary seat on the eighth electoral district will be opened Thursday 29 November till Monday 3 December.

The Electoral Commission said that the election to fill in the seat vacated by Tonio Borg is planned for Wednesday 5 December at the Naxxar Trade Fair Grounds.

Borg's parliamentary seat must be filled in by a casual election or the Nationalist Party could choose to co-opt somebody into parliament directly.

The EU Commissioner was elected from both the eighth and eleventh districts but chose to drop the eleventh district. A casual election will be held on Wednesday, and the winner  will be determined by the redistribution of the votes credited to Tonio Borg.

Former Nationalist MP Michael Asciak is in pole position to take Borg's seat as he obtained the fourth largest number of votes on the first count (564) followed by Martin Fenech (399), Ian Castaldi Paris (317), Josianne Cardona Gatt (160) and Mario Schembri (128).

The ultra-conservative Asciak had inherited the largest number of votes from Tonio Borg's first preferences and was the last candidate to be dropped before Beppe Fenech Adami took the last seat.

In casual elections, candidates must achieve 50% of the quota established in the election. The quota of the eighth district in 2008 was 3,750, meaning that in order to get elected a candidate must garner 1876 votes in a by-election.

In the eventuality that nobody reaches the quota or nobody submits a nomination, then the PN will co-opt somebody to fill in Tonio Borg's seat.

In the eventuality that Simon Busuttil emerges as the victor in Friday's PN Deputy leadership election, the PN could decide to co-opt the MEP to Parliament.

However the party would need to instruct the unelected eighth district candidates not to submit their application for the by-election and pave the way for the popular MEP to take a seat in Parliament. 

The last MP to be co-opted was Labour leader Joseph Muscat who took up the seat voluntarily vacated by Joseph Cuschieri. The latter was later rewarded for his sacrifice by taking up the sixth Maltese seat in the European Parliament in 2011 after securing the sixth seat in the 2009 EP elections.

The first engineered election was that of former PL leader Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici who was co-opted to Parliament in May 1982 following the resignation of Paul Xuereb who had been elected MP via a casual election. Later that year his predecessor Dom Mintoff anointed him as designate-leader. Mifsud Bonnici went on to replace Mintoff at the helm of the country between 1984 and 1987.

Former Prime Ministers Eddie Fenech Adami and Alfred Sant were also co-opted to Parliament after the death of MPs who were elected through a casual election on their electoral district.