Newly-elected Żebbuġ councillor Steve Zammit Lupi on Thursday admitted to being "overwhelmed" by the support he has received from people in his locality which enabled him to obtain more than a quota in first-count votes.

Although he contested as an independent, without any support from the two main political parties, Mr Zammit Lupi, an environmentalist, was elected with 947 votes on the first count. 

"The response has been beyond my expectations," he told Times of Malta. 

He believes his election could be a message to the two-party system - that, on a local level at least, people were ready to put candidates and ideas before partisan politics.

"That is the way it should always be," he said.

"Żebbuġ is small and I thought that [contesting independently] would be the best way to breach the political spectrum. I was able to focus on policies, rather than compete with others within my own party or in another party," Mr Zammit Lupi added. 

The young councillor, who turns 24 in August, admitted he did not expect to be elected, submitting his name at the eleventh hour and announcing his campaign just four weeks before the election. 

Now that he has been elected, he hopes to act as a mediator between the two five Labour and three Nationalist councillors within his locality and to accomplish the over 70 proposals that made up his manifesto. 

Mr Zammit Lupi's uncle, outgoing Partit Demokratiku leader Godfrey Farrugia, had also successfully contested local council elections as an independent candidate in 1993, where he went on to serve as mayor of Żebbuġ. He was again elected in a subsequent election.