The Labour Party has started drafting a general election campaign strategy as Robert Abela mulls a date to head to the polls.
The prime minister has appointed an internal strategy team that has started meeting on the fourth floor of the party’s Ħamrun headquarters, party sources told Times of Malta.
The close-knit team features a number of former prime minister Joseph Muscat’s team and is being informally led by his former spokesman Kurt Farrugia.
It also includes a few people who worked on Abela’s election campaign, which saw him elected party leader last year.
But it is still too early to say when the next general election will be held, party insiders say.
Options being considered, team members said, include dates as early as the end of this summer or just after the presentation of the yearly budget or the first quarter of 2022.
However, the final date is dependent on a number of factors, chiefly among them, the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic recovery.
The prime minister is also said to be gauging the political fallout of corruption cases under Labour’s watch as well as the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case.
The full term of the legislature comes to end in June 2022. However, without fixed-term parliamentary legislatures, Malta’s general election date remains the prime minister’s prerogative. This gives him the power to hold an election according to political convenience.
The way we handled the pandemic central to the way we present the party
Insiders said the election campaign being pieced together at present is loosely based on the motif of a captain who has weathered the storm with calmer seas ahead. This was a reference to both the handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the corruption crisis Abela inherited from his predecessor.
“Of course, the way the government handled the pandemic and the international scrutiny on the country will be central to the way we present the party to the electorate,” a party source said.
Meanwhile, since his election as Nationalist Party leader last year, Bernard Grech appointed MP Claudio Grech to lead the party’s election strategy team. PN insiders said the party was much better prepared to handle an election than previous years, but still required time to finetune a number of issues. The party, PN sources said, has a few aces up its sleeve that could rock the PL’s boat off its keel.
If an election is held before June 2022, it will be the second consecutive time the Labour administration has held an early vote.
The Muscat administration had called an election some eight months ahead of schedule in 2017 as it was faced with major corruption allegations.
Just five months later, Malta was rocked by the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who had been at the forefront of exposing corruption scandals.
The last two elections saw Labour elected with record landslide victories.
Polls published in recent months have indicated that the gap between the two parties may be narrower than previous years, but Labour retains an almost unassailable lead.