Election Desk: A middle finger in the middle of the campaign

Welcome to the Election Desk. 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.

Giving people the finger

First things first: the university election debate has never been a space for artful rhetoric and intellectual rigour. The debate, organised by the Malta University Debate Union before each election, has historically always been a shouting match among the audience members, with the two main parties mobilising their youth wings to rally up support. The winner is not determined by who made the most effective argument but by whose supporters shouted the most.

But it seems like Pierre Schembri Wismayer did not get the memo on this. The Momentum candidate was in the audience at the leaders’ debate when someone accused him of flashing a middle finger while Robert Abela was speaking. The crowd responded by chanting ‘barra’ [‘out’] at him. An usher approached him, and he stood up and left.

He had been posting on social media during the debate, calling students chanting party slogans “sad kids” who behave like “low IQ animals”. He also said Malta “REALLY REALLY” needs a debate society.

Later, he apologised publicly for the ordeal, saying he lost his cool and let his emotions get the better of him.

Five leaders, one stage

The debate itself had plenty going on before the Momentum moment (Moment-um?). All five party leaders – Robert Abela, Alex Borg, Arnold Cassola, Sandra Gauci and Paul Salomone – gathered at the University of Malta for the campaign’s first leaders’ debate.

The two main leaders spent most of the time sniping at each other. Abela asked why the PN still hadn’t launched its manifesto, and Borg replied that had they published it first, Labour would have copied it. Borg then presented photos of Labour’s 2022 green space pledges, which have not been implemented. Abela brought up Oliver Cini, the PN candidate who described himself as an engineer throughout the campaign until it emerged that he does not hold an engineer’s warrant.

The three smaller party leaders used their time to lambast both main parties for the giveaway-heavy campaigns. Cassola called their pledges “science-fiction”, and said they would “bankrupt the country and turn it into Greece during the worst of its financial crisis”. He also argued that Malta’s housing problem isn’t about a shortage of properties but a surplus of empty ones, thus calling for a vacant property tax.

Gauci, the only woman on stage, said she hoped more women would join politics in the future. She said her father and Abela’s were in the same class as children. While Abela’s father went on to become the president of Malta, her father became a cleaner. “My father cleaned people’s dirt. Now I want to clean up the dirt in parliament.”

Meanwhile, Salomone pitched land reclamation as a solution for small countries and suggested building a Formula One track on the reclaimed land. He also rejected the far-right label, describing Aħwa Maltin as “conservative right and Catholic”.

Five leaders took the stage at the University debate to make their pitch to students. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

On the roll (but shouldn’t be)

In other election news, a man who renounced his Maltese citizenship in October 2024 has received a voting document ahead of the May 30 election. Darryl became a British citizen in mid-2024 and formally renounced his Maltese citizenship shortly after. Despite having written confirmation of this, he somehow still ended up on the electoral register, and even received a voting document at a residence that he used to live in... nine years ago.

There seems to be a gap somewhere in the voter registration process. Community Malta says it notifies the Electoral Commission of citizenship renunciations monthly, but from the looks of it, this renunciation seems to have slipped past the Electoral Commission.

Nobody is suggesting Darryl is going to fly in and vote illegally, but as he pointed out, what’s to stop someone less scrupulous from doing so?