Charles Azzopardi, who is in the running for Labour’s parliamentary seat to replace former Finance Minister Edward Scicluna is reportedly now a member of the Nationalist Party, according to the Times of Malta.
Azzopardi, formerly the mayor of Rabat, was not allowed by the Labour Party to contest the 2019 local council elections after what he called “malicious manoeuvres” to tarnish his reputation and credibility.
He did however contest the 2017 general election on the PL ticket in the 7th district, which includes Rabat, which means that he is eligible to contest the casual election for the parliamentary seat vacated by Edward Scicluna, who has departed parliament to take up the role of Central Bank governor.
The Times of Malta said on Thursday that it now transpires that Azzopardi is a paid-up member of the PN and has been for a while, to the point that he was even eligible to vote in the party’s most recent leadership election.
The newspaper quoted party sources in saying that Azzopardi had joined the party after Labour ousted him in favour of Sandro Craus as mayor of Rabat.
The report reads that Azzopardi defied pressure for the PL not to contest for the seat, quoting party sources as saying that he even ignored job offers and senior positions in the diplomatic corps in favour of contesting the election.
The scenario will no doubt cause a headache for the PL as they now could stand to lose a seat in Parliament to the PN.
Azzopardi filed his nomination for the seat yesterday. He is one of three eligible candidates – MTA chairman Gavin Gulia and MCST chairman Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando being the others – who can contest, but is the only one to file a nomination so far. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando had told this newsroom that he would "certainly" contest the seat.
Azzopardi obtained the second highest number of first count votes in the 2017 election out of the three, but by the end of counting had the most votes out of them, owing to Malta’s vote transferring system and the donkey voting phenomenon – Azzopardi was first on the ballot sheet.
Azzopardi was barred from contesting the election soon after he had publicly opposed a proposed development on Saqqajja Hill in 2019. The day after that opposition, he was handed an anonymous report with allegations about the council’s operations. This report was given to him by a “person who had the duty to inform me about the report before the party took the hasty decision” to stop him from contesting on its behalf.
Could it be that the report was “hastily compiled internally by the party in which I militated for years”, Azzopardi asked in a social media post back then. “Why was I good for the 2017 general election and not good for the 2019 local council election,” he had said, even considering that the anonymous report covered the council’s operations between 2014 and 2017.
The casual election will take place next Tuesday, while nominations will continue to be accepted by the Electoral Commission until Saturday.