Ivan Martin looks at the major political developments this last 12 months, as an election dominated by global crisis signalled the end of the road for some and the start of a fresh chapter for others.  

The Muscat search

Malta had barely packed away the Christmas lights when a bombshell was sparked on the political landscape: on January 19, the police searched the home of former prime minister Joseph Muscat as part of a major corruption probe.

The search came after Times of Malta revealed in November how the former prime minister had received €60,000 from a company linked to a contract to run three state hospitals.

News of the search triggered an earthquake in the ruling Labour Party.

For the second half of January, Robert Abela was left trying to contain a potential split within the PL as several Labour supporters openly rallied behind Muscat and even questioned how Abela did nothing to try to stop the embarrassing police visit. 

Muscat, deemed an untouchable after leading the party to successive electoral successes, said the “needless theatrics” were possibly designed to “humiliate” him. 

Thake out

David Thake became the first political casualty of the year, when he resigned from parliament some four weeks after Times of Malta reported how one of his companies owed €270,000 in unpaid VAT. Thake insisted he was only guilty of making a “stupid” administrative mistake but he was stepping down to send out a message that his and the PN’s standards are higher than those of the Labour Party. 

Roberta Metsola makes history

MEP Roberta Metsola made history when she became the first Maltese politician to preside over an EU institution and the third woman to lead the European Parliament when she was elected in January. She will serve in that role until 2024. 

She was elected in a landslide victory and her time in office was deemed as a success from international political observers, who say she has brought a new fizz to what had become a somewhat drab office in Brussels. But just weeks ago, one of her vice-presidents was arrested on suspicion of money laundering, sparking Metsola’s first crisis.

Will an election be called?

By the second month of the year, speculation over when a general election would be called had hit fever pitch. 

Abela would keep the country guessing for a few more weeks. 

Instead, Robert Abela had some answering to do when Times of Malta reported in February how he had been involved in a suspicious property deal with a man investigated over suspected organised crime. 

The government came under fire when news broke of plans to develop a yacht marina in Marsascala. Abela had initially said the project would regenerate the area, but eventually buckled under public pressure and declared that the marina plans were cancelled. 

Questions were then raised about privacy rights, when opposition leader Bernard Grech accused the Labour Party of flying a drone over his family home. 

Abela fires starting pistol

On February 20, Abela finally ended weeks of election speculation. He asked the president to dissolve parliament and fired the starting pistol on a one-month election campaign. The date had been set for March 26.

A lacklustre campaign

For the next four weeks, daily events were held by both the PN and PL camps but although regular pledges and announcements were made, the campaign lacked the spark and sizzle of previous elections, especially since surveys predicted a comfortable Labour victory.

Both parties seemed to have agreed not to engage in subterfuge, with the usual mud-slinging and name-calling swapped for a far more congenial approach. 

There was some turbulence in the PN when prominent figures simultaneously announced that they would not be contesting the election. In what seemed to be a coordinated move, Mario Galea, Kristy Debono, Claudio Grech and Clyde Puli all announced they would not be standing. 

Meanwhile, former PL leader Joseph Muscat made a comeback when he started endorsing PL candidates during the election campaign.  

War overshadows election 

February ended with the shocking Russian invasion of Ukraine. The killing of civilians in Europe’s first war in years dominated the global agenda. What little momentum Malta’s election campaign had gathered quickly evaporated. 

A round of cheeky cheques

Back to the election campaign and the government raised eyebrows when it issued households with a round of tax rebates in the middle of an election campaign. 

The move was slammed by the opposition as a vote-buying exercise and an abuse of the power of incumbency by the government. 

A huge victory for Labour

On vote counting day, the Labour Party won the 2022 general election by a major landslide, securing a hat-trick of victories and returning Robert Abela to power.

Abela’s Labour Party secured 55.1 per cent of the popular vote, with a majority of just under 40,000 votes.

One of the most interesting things to come out of the election result was the number of people who opted not to vote. 

Voter turnout stood at some 85 per cent, the lowest in 60 years. In the days after the election, both Abela and Grech weighed in on the issue of voter abstention, saying parties needed to do more to keep voters engaged. 

Jason Azzopardi loses out

Perhaps the most notable name to fail to make it back to the house was firebrand PN MP Jason Azzopardi. 

The outspoken politician had made a name for himself as an anti-corruption campaigner, regularly calling out government wrongdoing. 

When he even failed to make it to parliament in the subsequent casual election, he took to social media to say he had been “deliberately isolated” by the PN leadership. 

He would eventually resign from the PN a few weeks later, following a public spat with the party leadership.

A new cabinet

Soon after his electoral victory, Abela appointed a cabinet of 18 ministers and four parliamentary secretaries, shuffling some key figures around but also keeping 11 of his previous ministers in their same posts. 

While all three women elected on the Labour ticket were given posts, there was no room for former ministers Edward Zammit Lewis, Michael Farrugia and Carmelo Abela, or junior ministers Alex Muscat, Chris Agius and Deo Debattista.

Other notable changes were former transport minister Ian Borg being given the foreign policy brief, and Rosianne Cutajar remaining on the backbench.

Shadow Cabinet announced

Soon after Abela revealed his team, Grech summoned PN MPs to appoint his shadow cabinet.  He handed his predecessor Adrian Delia one of the most high-profile positions, making him responsible for transport, mobility and capital projects in an apparent rapprochement.

Conspicuous in their absence were three party veterans: Mario de Marco, a former minister and shadow minister for finance, Chris Said, formerly responsible for Gozo, and Carm Mifsud Bonnici, formerly responsible for foreign affairs. 

No challengers to Grech’s leadership

Bernard Grech was re-elected Nationalist Party leader at the end of May, having run uncontested. 

With a fragmented party still reeling from a 39,500-vote defeat in the March election, Grech needed to secure a strong mandate to lead the party into the 2024 European Parliament elections.  

In the lead-up to his election, rumours swirled of a possible protest vote or voter abstention.

He himself had said that anything less than 70 per cent would be “disappointing”. In the end, he secured 81 per cent of the vote.  

Where’s Robert? 

Malta had a quiet summer on the political front and after a few weeks, questions started to be raised about where the prime minister and most of his cabinet were hiding. 

Abela became conspicuous by his absence, reportedly repeatedly travelling out of the country on his personal cabin cruiser.  Meanwhile, government press conferences and announcements almost ground to a halt. The anger grew as inflation mounted.

Robert Arrigo

In summer, the PN’s Robert Arrigo was diagnosed with cancer. The former deputy leader of the party underwent chemotherapy but eventually lost his battle with the disease in October. 

In August, he made a public broadside against Bernard Grech, accusing him on Facebook of lying to the public and making his party’s executive “look like idiots”, saying the Nationalist Party leader should do the honourable thing and resign. 

In a final interview weeks before he died, Arrigo told Times of Malta that the PN had caused him more pain than the cancer he was battling. 

His death was met with tributes from both sides of the political camp.

Budget makes the cut

A pledge to invest €600 million to cushion increases in prices dominated the headline measures in this year’s budget when it was unveiled in October. 

The government mostly focused on low-income earners, pensioners and workers battling to keep up with the rising cost of living.

In the lead up to the budget, Times of Malta reported how several major investments that had previously been announced had effectively been put on hold as the government diverted the bulk of its efforts to managing the global crisis sparked by the pandemic and then the war in Ukraine. 

Abela finally interviewed

In November, Abela finally gave his first interview to Times of Malta. He had doggedly avoided sitting down with independent newsrooms and spent years only taking questions during brief doorstep appearances. 

2022 draws to a close with a raging debate over a controversial abortion amendment.  Abela is intent on forging ahead with his plans to introduce the reform, but he faces the possibility of being the first prime minister to have a president resign under his watch. 

The reform will be voted on in the first few weeks of 2023, so Abela will start the new year with a major hurdle to overcome.