Besides providing the Nationalist Party with another electoral drubbing, this weekend’s result has also seen a number of the group known in 2020 as the party’s ‘17 Blue Heroes’ either underperform compared to the past, or not be elected at all.
The ’17 Blue Heroes’ was a moniker first shared by then PN MP Jason Azzopardi in 2020 and was the group of PN parliamentary group members who opposed the leadership of then party leader Adrian Delia.
The group had gone to President George Vella to say that they had no faith in Delia as leader in a bid to get him ousted from the post of Opposition leader. When that did not transpire, tensions continued to devolve between the factions, with a leadership election subsequently being called: an election which saw Bernard Grech take Delia’s place.
Grech’s leadership did manage to avert the seismic electoral defeat which was being predicted during the Delia tenure, but he made no inroads into the PL’s majority of the party, and was punished by lower than usual turnouts in PN-leaning districts.
Those who did vote for the PN also seem to have punished these ‘Blue heroes’ along with some other incumbent MPs.
A post shared by Jason Azzopardi back in 2020 showing the 17 Blue Heroes. Stephen Spiteri later distanced himself from the moniker.
Out of the 17 Blue Heroes, Simon Busuttil did not contest the general election, having taken up a high-level post with the European People’s Party. Roberta Metsola, now European Parliament President, and David Casa, an MEP, of course did not contest the general election either.
From the remaining 14, Marthese Portelli did not contest the general election having left the party in 2020 to take up a post first with the Malta Developers Association and then with the Malta Chamber of Commerce.
Therese Comodini Cachia did not contest the election either, and neither did Claudio Grech, who took a last-minute back seat in order to give more space to new candidates to take over and instead remained in a party strategy post.
That leaves 10 of these blue heroes who did contest these elections: Jason Azzopardi, Karol Aquilina, Beppe Fenech Adami, Karl Gouder, Claudette Buttigieg, Kevin Cutajar, Mario De Marco, Toni Bezzina, Ryan Callus, Chris Said, and Stephen Spiteri.
Out of those, Beppe Fenech Adami and Stephen Spiteri were the only ones who were elected as the best performing candidates in their districts.
Stephen Spiteri was the only candidate for the PN elected his home second district and the third district, but he was the one out of the 17 tagged in the image who had distanced himself from the ‘blue hero’ moniker.
Beppe Fenech Adami meanwhile polled highest in the eighth district – though he only beat former PN leader Adrian Delia (who was ousted by the said Blue Heroes) by 104 first count votes.
Ryan Callus was also elected on two districts, but on both occasions he was beaten by other candidates: on the sixth district, Jerome Caruana Cilia was the first preference of PN voters, and on the seventh district it was Adrian Delia who polled highest.
Mario De Marco meanwhile held onto his seat on the first district, but new candidate Darren Carabott was the first to be elected of the two, even if De Marco got 50 more first count votes.
Chris Said kept his seat in Gozo, but he was soundly beaten by young new candidate Alex Borg, who won a staggering 6,108 first count votes compared to the 2,772 first count votes which he achieved. Said in fact was the fifth to be elected from Gozo, and did not even reach the vote quota by the time counting had been completed.
From the remaining list, Toni Bezzina was not elected – although that was in part down to the fact that party leader Bernard Grech contested on his district. Bezzina is likely to retain his seat in Parliament either through a casual election or through the constitutional re-balancing procedure.
Karol Aquilina was also not elected, but he has a good chance of being elected through a casual election on the 10th district.
Jason Azzopardi meanwhile failed to get elected from both the 4th and the 9th district, and will have to rely on a casual election in the latter district in order to be elected. He will have a difficult, but not impossible, task to overcome if both Eve Borg Bonello and Noel Muscat decide to contest the casual election.
Karl Gouder did not poll well at all in both his districts, garnering only 122 votes in the 9th district and 284 first count votes in the 10th district. Seats in these districts will open up through casual elections, but it is unlikely that he has garnered enough support to be elected even then.
Claudette Buttigieg was not elected from the 12th or the 13th district, and no seats will be opening up on either of those districts, meaning that she will have to rely on the gender corrective mechanism in order to keep her seat.
Kevin Cutajar meanwhile was the third preferred PN candidate in Gozo after Alex Borg and Chris Said, but he was not elected either.
This all being said, a number of other party veterans who were not part of these Blue Heroes also struggled to get elected or were left behind.
Deputy leader David Agius, who in 2017 was elected from two districts, was only elected from one this year – his home 11th district – and he placed behind party leader Bernard Grech and Ivan Bartolo in the rankings.
Previous MPs who were not named to be part of this group of rebels Edwin Vassallo and Maria Deguara were both not re-elected either.
The weekend’s result either way presented a stark wake-up call for many of the PN’s more established MPs. Some still have another five years in Parliament to make their mark with voters but others will not be having that luxury.