It is 7.01am, and Labour’s star candidate for the EU parliament opens the door of his Siġġiewi townhouse with a smile, wearing tracksuit shorts and a red t-shirt with the eight-pointed cross on his chest.

This is Agius Saliba’s golden hour with his daughter Amelia (who also greets the Times of Malta crew at the door) and who is preparing for a school outing.

“The first hour of the day is the best quality time I have with my daughter,” he says.

As he prepares coffee for our crew, he explains why he preferred to spend half the week in Brussels and half the week in Malta throughout the time as an MEP. He wanted to remain close to the people, he points out.

“I feel most uncomfortable knocking on doors during the campaign, because people feel you’re chasing them for their vote,” he says.

“Good politicians must keep in touch constantly. The campaign is the icing on the cake, but you must bake the cake during those five years.”

At 8am Agius Saliba leaves the house to drop his daughter off at school. But there was too much traffic, so he took her directly to the school outing – Esplora in Kalkara.

From there he joins his driver and aides at the Vittoriosa flea market, where people greet him affectionately as he has a coffee and discusses life and politics with them.

“You’d think people talk a lot about politics when they meet you, but they don’t. They mostly talk about their families and what’s going on in their life,” he tells Times of Malta.

Metsola greeted with applause, loud cheers

Meanwhile at the Golden Sands Hotel in Għajn Tuffieħa, PN’s star candidate Roberta Metsola had just arrived at her first event of a very long day ahead, greeted by loud cheers and applause at an event hosted by PN MP Robert Cutajar.

Supporters are delighted to see her join them and they promise to vote for her ­– some take selfies with her and tell her their children admire her.

It is almost 10am now but speaking to our crew Metsola says her day started much earlier – at around 6.15am – and predicts she is in for a 16-hour day of campaigning. She is not wrong.

“Days are always long – it depends whether I’m working in my role as president or in Malta as an MEP – but they always stretch till late,” she says.

“My family always asks whether I’m eating enough,” she adds jokingly.

After a lengthy Q&A session at the Chamber of Commerce in Valletta, Metsola visits the Gżira street where she spent her childhood. Standing outside her childhood home she reminisced on her memories with her neighbours and friends, her dance lessons, and the times she used to invite her friends over to watch DVDs at home.

She also visits a corner grocer where she buys a packet of Twistees. On her way to the shop a school van stops near here as the driver yells, “The children want to speak to you”, and he opens the van door as eager schoolchildren talk to her about their studies and upcoming exams.

Frontrunners

According to a Times of Malta poll published last weekend, Metsola remains the clear frontrunner in Saturday’s race.

One in every four voters said she is their top preference and she is also the favourite candidate of three out of every four people who plan to vote PN.

PL MEP Alex Agius Saliba is the second most popular candidate, with 21 per cent of preferences.

But they are not celebrating yet.

“I don’t know [whether I’ll be elected]. We all start from zero,” Metsola says.

“The boxes are still locked and will remain locked until Saturday night. We knock on doors because Maltese people insist on meeting us and they bestow great responsibility upon us and I take it very seriously, so I will continue to work until the very last moment.”

Asked a similar question, Agius Saliba echoes an almost identical reply.

“We always start at zero-zero. Every morning I like to think to myself that I will not be elected, so that I’m motivated to work harder.”

He says it is not easy to try and help everyone, especially when people stop to talk to him when he is out with his family.

“It’s common for us to be out having a pizza on Saturday night, for instance, and people come asking for help. You try to help them, it’s not easy.”

A quick ftira and more meetings

Agius Saliba also manages to grab a Maltese ftira with his aides, telling our crew he only has half an hour for lunch and then he will not have time to eat before late in the evening.

He then goes to Valletta for a meeting with the General Workers Union and visits a small grocer in Mosta and a private company’s offices in Mrieħel.

Meanwhile, Metsola visits the MSPCA animal sanctuary in Floriana, where she tells Times of Malta she would like to see the EU have an animal commissioner and appeals for people to adopt sheltered animals.

From there she goes to buy some pastizzi from a well-known Żejtun bakery followed by a visit to Marsascala to knock on more doors and then to Kirkop where she meets her long-time friend Maria who  has known Metsola since her earliest political days. They first met when Metsola was 20 and they have been friends since.

“It’s like she’s my daughter,” Maria tells Times of Malta.

Back home in Siġġiewi, Agius Saliba has a coffee and prepares for the evening’s party event in Vittoriosa.  He has prepared some notes but will not read from them. A good speaker cannot properly engage with their audience if they are just reading from a written speech, he points out.

As he arrives in Vittoriosa at around 6.30pm and walks past supporters people ask him for selfies, shake his hand and hug him. Some assure him they will vote for him, saying ,“You don’t need to worry [about our vote]” and greet him with the words “the number one”.

As he is addressing the Vittoriosa crowd, Metsola spends some time doing some Brussels work from her Ħamrun office and then goes to the St Julian’s band club to meet more supporters, followed by an appearance on NET TV.

By the time she leaves NET’s studios and Agius Saliba leaves the Vittoriosa rally, it is already quite dark, but the two candidates are nowhere close to calling it a day. Both continue with house visits in many other localities, and both eventually return home much later in the evening. It’s been a long day.