Cyrus Engerer has been elected to replace Miriam Dalli in the European Parliament.
The election was held this morning.
Since the European Parliament elections had been the first in Malta in which electronic counting was introduced, the process took a few minutes.
Engerer finished with a total of 32,918 votes after the elimination of Josef Caruana as seen in screenshot below.
The first to be eliminated was Robert Micallef, followed by, in this order, Mary Gauci, James Grech, Felix Galea Busuttil and Lorna Vassallo.
When Vassallo was eliminated, Engerer had more votes than Caruana, which automatically excluded Caruana in Engerer's favour.
In his first comments to the media, Engerer said he is proud to be representing Malta and thanked those who participated in the election process last year.
He thanked all candidates who represented the Labour Party in the 2019 election, saying all worked hard to make it a big win for Labour.
On Miriam Dalli, Engerer said he will seek to walk in her footsteps especially in areas she worked so much in - the environment and public health.
He will also focus on human and civil rights which, he said, have always been his pet topic.
Engerer said he would like to see more cooperation among Maltese MEPs in the European institutions. Unfortunately, this does not happen. He believes that while in Malta it is healthy that candidates from different parties take different positions, in the European Parliament they should pull the same rope.
He said he will continue to defend Malta's name and praised Robert Abela's government for working hard to improve Malta's reputation abroad.
The counting of votes in the casual election to replace the late Frederick Azzopardi is continuing.
Five candidates are in the running.
Azzopardi had obtained 1,465 votes in the 2017 election. After the transferring of votes, he had finished with 3,585, short of the 4,306 quota needed.
But he had been elected as one of two additional Nationalist Party MP as part of the proportional representation system.
Maria Portelli, Joseph Ellis and Ryan Mercieca seem to be picking up more votes than Jason Zammit and Censu Galea.
Photos: Giuseppe Attard
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Earlier
Two casual elections are taking place today at the Naxxar counting hall, one related to the European Parliament and the other regarding Malta’s own House of Representatives.
Miriam Dalli resigned from the EP last month to be co-opted to the Maltese Parliament after the resignation of Joseph Muscat, while Nationalist MP Frederick Azzopardi passed away last month, and his seat will be taken up today.
Seven candidates are contesting to replace Dalli while five have submitted their nomination to substitute Azzopardi.
The EP election is open to Felix Busuttil Galea, Josef Caruana, Cyrus Engerer, Mary Gauci, James Grech, Robert Micallef and Lorna Vassallo, all Labour candidates.
Engerer received the highest amount of first count votes from among the non-elected candidates and is considered to be the frontrunner in the casual election. But all candidates start from zero as all need to obtain half of the amount that Dalli did in the 2019 election.
Dalli had obtained 63,438 first preferences, by far the candidate who obtained the largest number of votes. But the commission will take into consideration only 37,174, which was the quota that was required for election. It must be recalled that in the EP election Malta votes as one district.
With regard to the casual election on the 13th district (Gozo) to replace Azzopardi, the candidates who will be contesting Ryan Mercieca, Joseph Ellis, Censu Galea, Maria Portelli and Jason Zammit.
Mercieca obtained the highest number of first-count votes from among the non-elected candidates.
On Saturday, the Nationalist Party disassociated itself from Mercieca, saying its Ethics Commission had been asked to investigate media reports about Mercieca, even in view of a recent court judgement on a libel case that Mercieca had initiated.
Mercieca had initiated the libel suit against it-Torca in January 2016 after a report in the newspaper that he was in a mess for failing to produce documents related to EU funding to an association of NGOs.
Mercieca lost the case in July 2018 after the courts determind that the facts were “substantially correct” and hence cannot be considered defamatory.
It is unclear whether Mercieca, if elected, would be an independent candidate, robbing the PN of a Parliamentary seat.
The Malta Independent will keep you updated with developments. The process is expected to start at 8.30am.