Election Desk: Here’s everything that happened during the campaign

Welcome to the Election Desk. Usually, this is where we round up the major headlines of the last 24 hours, together with some of the more light-hearted and funnier sides of the campaign trail. Since this is the last day of the campaign, we are instead rounding up the main news items of the entire campaign.

The campaign begins

It all started when Abela made a sombre message-to-the-nation, citing the global energy crisis and asking for a fresh mandate. The PN had promo videos ready within minutes, although it was Darren Carabott who got the fastest response with his five-second “Tlaqna, kap?” reel.

Both parties unveiled their slogans immediately. PN went with Nifs Ġdid (“A breath of fresh air”) and Labour with Int Malta (“You’re Malta”). Labour got its billboards up immediately, while the PN was a little slower with its advertising. Momentum tried to get ahead with banners, but the cleansing department removed them.

It was a bit of a bumpy start for Labour. A day before the election was announced, Clayton Bartolo pulled out of the contest, citing a future smear campaign that would deflect attention from Labour’s electoral platform. A day later, the Labour executive blocked Roderick Galdes from contesting as a PL candidate. Galdes challenged the vote but later appeared to have conceded to the decision.

Key pledges

Labour’s first proposals included interest-free loans for first-time buyers earning under €40,000 and buying properties under €300,000, maternity leave extended to six months, and paternity leave to one month.

Meanwhile, the PN promised energy bills “so low we won’t need subsidies”. Adrian Delia, who floated the pledge first, did not give an explanation immediately. Alex Borg instead spent the first week announcing hospitals and free cancer medication.

Labour continued to release more proposals that week: a free Gozo ferry for pedestrian residents, a Malta-Gozo electricity interconnector and a third Malta-Sicily interconnector. PN continued on health, promising to bump healthcare student stipends to the minimum wage and invest €600 million in the hospital network over five years.

By the end of the week, both parties welcomed more official candidates into their fold, but one candidate proved controversial. When Omar Rababah announced that he would contest the election as a Labour Party candidate, he was met with a barrage of hateful comments targeting his religion. All the major parties rallied to support him, and Labour went on to approve his candidature with an overwhelming majority.

In the meantime, Maltese expats started to make arrangements to travel back home so that they could have their say in the general election. KM Malta Airlines offered discounted fares on certain dates, but the booking process was turbulent at best. One voter made 44 calls before getting through to the flight booking hotline.

Controversies

More proposals started to trickle in from Labour and the PN. The PN said it would cut energy bills by installing solar panels on all government buildings, while Labour unveiled its flagship €1,000 annual “hard work bonus” for every worker.

It was also around this time that Abela started to boast that Labour spent months finding a legal workaround to exclude around 100,000 foreign workers from the €1,000 bonus, by requiring a five-year residency.

The PN’s LNG terminal proposal at Hurd’s Bank generated plenty of discussion, especially after Robert Abela claimed the LNG terminal idea was originally pitched to him by “Malta’s biggest fuel smuggler”. Borg denied this strongly, and even signed an affidavit saying he never met a fuel contrabandist in relation to this proposal.

And after Rababah, another candidate ruffled feathers, this time from the PN camp. Conrad Borg Manche, the former Labour mayor of Gżira who resigned from the party in 2023 over development clashes, submitted his nomination as a PN candidate.

Nominations closed shortly after, with 162 confirmed candidates across 13 districts. Sixteen sitting MPs decided not to recontest: nine from the PN and seven from Labour.

Halfway through the election, Abela formally signed the Manoel Island handover deal and pledged that national parks will not be subject to any development – although ADPD immediately pointed out that Labour helped give Manoel Island to developers in 2000 by approving a parliamentary motion on the matter.

Another damning moment for Labour’s environmental credentials was when the PA’s executive chair was photographed playing padel with the same man behind the illegal padel courts. Abela dismissed any conflict-of-interest concerns.

At this point, people were also still trying to figure out who the alleged fuel smuggler was that Abela referred to earlier in the campaign. Unlike Borg, Abela refused to directly deny meeting the alleged fuel smuggler. Instead, he said he meets with everyone.

The PN turned its agenda to population policy, pledging a dedicated authority, two separate bureaucratic one-stop shops and an AFM-police joint enforcement unit.

The party also pledged to cover part of the mortgage interest of first-time buyers for several years. This unravelled quickly: Borg first said it would cost €2.8 million a year; Labour’s finance minister, Clyde Caruana, then called a press conference to say that only 750 people would benefit before the money runs out; the PN then clarified that the real figure is €10.5 million in the first year, rising to €60.5 million by 2035.

Debates kick off

Abela and Borg started to go head-to-head in debates in the fourth week of the campaign. The first debate was held at the University of Malta, with all five party leaders on stage. They traded barbs on their manifestos, but the most interesting moments came from the third parties – for better or for worse.  ADPD leader Sandra Gauci made a memorable quote when she said her father worked as a cleaner, cleaning people’s dirt. “Now I want to clean up the dirt in parliament,” she continued.

But Momentum candidate Pierre Schembri Wismayer gave us the most memorable moment when he was accused of flashing the middle finger. The crowd chanted “barra” until an usher escorted him out. He later apologised for the ordeal.

The Malta Chamber of SMEs hosted the second debate of the campaign, this time between Abela and Borg only. Abela picked apart the numerical errors in the PN manifesto while Borg argued that Labour created no new economic sectors in a decade.

One of the lighter moments of the campaign came about when the PN launched an AI chatbot to help people understand the pledges in its proposal. The problem, however, was that the chatbot started generating misleading images, such as an oil rig to illustrate a clean energy proposal and a megaharbour in Mġarr requiring land that Gozo doesn’t even have. The PN said the images are “conceptual aids” and shouldn’t be taken literally.

Despite being in the midst of an election campaign, Abela continued to inaugurate investments as prime minister. He inaugurated a factory, two gardens, a ferry service, and signed an AI deal with OpenAI and Microsoft, all in the first four weeks of the campaign. When journalists challenged him on this, he said he was governing, not campaigning.

The third debate was hosted by Saviour Balzan on TVM’s Xtra. Abela quizzed Borg on economic figures, including the population of Malta, while Borg called Labour’s track record “a certificate of failure for quality of life”.

As the campaign started to come to a close, the two parties managed to secure major DJs for their final mass meetings. Labour booked Armin van Buuren for the Floriana Granaries meeting while PN chose Dimitri Vegas for its “mass festival” at Luxol.

The fourth debate was held by the Malta Chamber. During the debate, Abela revealed that Labour’s manifesto will cost €6.3 billion over five years.

Ironically, one of the more discussion-worthy debates was the Il-Każin/Times of Malta debate. However, Abela didn’t show up, and Borg spent almost two hours alone on stage, facing the toughest questions of the campaign. It was during this debate that Borg pledged to resign if the PN’s metro proposal isn’t completed within five years. He also confirmed that the PN’s manifesto will cost €6.7 billion.

What the polls said

There were no major shakes during the election campaign, and the polls seem to have reflected this.

Throughout the campaign, surveys commissioned by the Times of Malta showed the Labour Party extending its lead over the PN throughout the campaign. A survey carried out in April, before Abela announced the election, put Labour at 51.3% of the vote share. The latest survey has Labour at 53.5%.

Meanwhile, support for the PN dipped. The party started at 45% in April, but their vote share dropped to 42.9% towards the end of the campaign.

The latest survey from pollster Vincent Marmara put Labour at 53.3% of the vote and the PN at 42.8%, similar to the Times of Malta’s results.

Surveys from MaltaToday have shown a more modest result, but with Labour still in the lead. The latest survey shows a 50.6% vote share for the Labour Party, while the PN retains 44.2%.