The governing Labour Party could lose yet another Parliamentary seat in what looks to be another blunder by its leader, Robert Abela.

We are speaking, of course, about Tuesday’s casual election, during which Edward Scicluna’s recently vacated seat could be won by a former Labour mayor who has since become a lifelong member of the Nationalist Party.

Charles Azzopardi had unsuccessfully contested the 2017 general election and, in 2019, the Labour Party barred him from re-contesting the local council elections. At the time, it was said that Azzopardi was being investigated over alleged corruption. No charges have been brought against him, and the Labour Party never spoke of the case again, nor did it publish the anonymous report it had supposedly received, and which contained allegations against Azzopardi.

Azzopardi’s 2017 barring paved the way for OPM official Sandro Craus to become the mayor of Rabat.

MCST chairman and former PN MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and incumbent MTA chairman Gavin Gulia are also eligible to contest the casual election, with Gulia submitting his nomination yesterday. Azzopardi is considered to be the favourite to clinch Scicluna’s seat.

There have been worrying reports on the methods the Labour Party is trying to use to make sure that this does not happen. It has been reported that Azzopardi has been asked not to contest, including by the Prime Minister himself, and also that he has been offered government employment in return for not submitting his name. The offers reportedly included a job in the diplomatic service. Such tactics have been used in the past and the diplomatic corps has been used in other instances to ‘reward’ friends of the party. Unfortunately, some of the people who were appointed ambassadors in this way were not up to the task.

The Charles Azzopardi saga shows, among other things, the dirty side of politics – how political parties sometimes use sensitive positions to either reward their friends or to keep their ‘enemies’ away from certain places.

But this episode also shows a clear lack of judgment by Prime Minister Robert Abela, whose machinations to get Clyde Caruana into Parliament might have cost Labour another seat in the House.

The plan was obviously not thought through. Perhaps Abela should have asked some backbench MP to give up his seat and should have retained Scicluna in Parliament until the end of this term. The PM probably thought he could convince Azzopardi not to contest the casual election, but the former mayor has defied Abela.

Some might say that the government still has a strong majority in Parliament and that losing one seat will not lessen its power.

If Azzopardi were to be elected and join the Opposition benches, the government would still have a majority of five seats (technically six, since independent MP Konrad Mizzi votes with the government, anyway).

But it would show inexperience and a lack of acumen by Robert Abela, with a precious Parliamentary seat given away capriciously. We only found out about Azzopardi’s PN membership this week, but Abela would have known this before us.

He probably thought a government job offer would do the trick, but Azzopardi showed him that not everyone us up for sale.