Being PN deputy leader hurt my election campaign, says Alex Perici Calascione

Alex Perici Calascione said serving as PN deputy leader during the election campaign hindered rather than helped his own bid for a parliamentary seat.

While the role gave him a national platform, he said Maltese politics remains intensely personal: “If you do not knock on doors, people are not getting to know you, deputy leader or otherwise.”

Perici Calascione was elected Nationalist Party deputy leader in 2022, first serving when Bernard Grech was leader. He held on to the position after Alex Borg took over and successfully contested the general election, becoming an MP for the first time in June.

Still, the deputy leader failed to get elected on the first district and received the PN’s third seat on the ninth district, receiving fewer first-count votes than Joe Giglio and Eve Borg Bonello.

Speaking to Times of Malta, Perici Calascione said being Borg’s number two meant he spent much of the 33-day campaign supporting other candidates rather than working on his personal campaign.

“Out of the 33-day campaign, 14 days were spent attending activities organised by my colleagues in districts I was not contesting. I knew that this was my duty as deputy leader: to put aside my personal campaign and help my colleagues,” he said.

“Personally, it [being deputy leader] was a hindrance because if I had spent those 14 days in my district, as my constituents rightly expected, the result may have been different.”

However, Perici Calascione said touring Malta during the campaign meant meeting voters from all over the country and understanding the issues that different groups of people were facing.

Plans to contest post

As part of his role, Perici Calascione is chairing a party committee on amending the party statute, the document that sets out the party’s rules and procedures.

Central to the changes are plans to divide Perici Calascione’s role into two: a deputy leader for parliamentary affairs and one for party affairs.

Perici Calascione said he planned to contest one of the roles and remain deputy leader but declined to say which role he wanted.

Another change being discussed, Perici Calascione said, was a reform of the way the PN decides which casual election takes place.

Since candidates can contest two districts, the PN and PL must decide after every general election which district a candidate elected on both must give up.

The PN’s rules dictate that a newly elected MP must represent the district on which they received the most votes, while the PL gives free rein to the party’s executive to decide.

On this, Perici Calascione said the PN was discussing removing the current rules in favour of giving more power to the executive.

“Before that amendment, it was the party executive that decided. That meant the possibility of choosing someone who could contribute more to the party and the country.

“On the other hand, you can fall into ‘personalisms’. So, this current formula was created. If it is going to change, we need to consider it on a general level and not think of specific cases,” he said.

‘PN in stronger position’

Perici Calascione said he was not happy to see the PN lose the election but said the party had made “great advancements”, especially when considering that the government had “rewritten the definition of what the power of incumbency means”.

The PN lost the general election but reduced the first-count vote gap to 22,000 from 40,000.

When analysing the result he also pointed to the fact that Alex Borg had been leading the party for less than a year when the election was called.

“It does not mean we are happy with the result, but in those circumstances, the Nationalist Party made important progress. It broke the idea that the 40,000 gap was untouchable. That message was sent. The result gives us the courage to keep going... We are now in a stronger position.”