Joseph Ellis has been elected to fill the parliamentary seat seat vacated by Frederick Azzopardi, who died in October.

Ellis won the casual election for the Gozo seat with 1,968 votes, defeating hopeful Ryan Mercieca, who picked up 1,425 votes.

In comments afterwards, Ellis said he would emulate his late Nationalist Party colleague.

“I want to follow in Frederick Azzopardi’s footsteps and be close to the people without too much pomp,” he said.

It is the Gozitan lawyer's first foray into elected politics.

The PN's other candidates contesting the casual election were Ċensu Galea, Maria Portelli, and Jason Zammit.

Mercieca had been seen as a threat because he was contesting the election, as an independent candidate after the Nationalist Party on Sunday dissociated with him.

Submitting his nomination on Tuesday, Mercieca he had said he was doing so as a “sign of respect to his voters and his love for Gozo”.

The result took four hours to be known as counting was carried out by hand since electronic voting was only introduced after the 2017 general election. 

A second casual election for the MEP seat vacated by Labour MP Miriam Dalli was also held on Thursday. 

Cyrus Engerer was elected after a few minutes, with the speedy process due to electronic counting introduced during the European Parliament elections in 2019.