PL blast out election billboards and banners at a rate of four per kilometre

Malta's roads have been taken over by billboards and banners, most of which blast out Labour's Int Malta election slogan. 

Within minutes of Robert Abela calling a snap election on Monday evening, fresh campaign posters were pasted across signs onto billboards stretching into the distance.

On Tuesday morning, Times of Malta took a five-kilometre drive along one of the country's busiest routes. from the main road next to the Addolorata cemetery to the Valletta roundabout at the end of St Anne Street.   

Of the 27 billboards and banners spotted on the journey, 20 advertised the Labour Party. The Nationalist Party had no billboards along the route but had seven banners, all between the Blata l-Bajda and the Valletta roundabout.

The Labour Party had ramped up its billboard presence in recent weeks, advertising everything from its general congress to the party's May 1 political event, in a move that increased speculation that an election would be called.

Billboards are a common feature of election campaigns.

This pre-election political advertising allowed the party to avoid a rule banning election banners before an election is called.

A PN banner set up in Floriana.

Within minutes of the election being announced, Times of Malta began receiving pictures of billboards that had been swiftly replaced with fresh slogans.   

Before the sun had set, the PN had also installed a number of banners, with their own slogan “nifs ġdid”. 

Momentum, one of the smaller political parties contesting the election, had its banners removed after it began erecting them on the Santa Venera tunnels.  

The party said the campaign was "not a level playing field". The Cleansing Department, which removed the banners, said they had been erected before the election was announced and were therefore illegal. 

Billboards across Malta’s roads are a common feature of electoral campaigns.