A PN general election candidate and local councillor has quit the party, alleging that it had favoured another female candidate over her.
Doris Borg – who was a general election candidate on the 2nd and 4th district and who, until Wednesday, was the PN’s only councillor in the village of Xghajra – accused the PN of discriminating against her and of trampling over her dignity in the run-up to the 2022 general election.
"Friends, I believe in politics because it is a tool through which you can be close to the people and of help to the people. This is what I've done throughout my life, especially in the last 10 years when I worked relentlessly even if it meant sacrifices from my side or from my family," she wrote on social media.
“I accepted to be a candidate for the Nationalist Party in the past general election to take another step forward and be of service to everyone. However unfortunately certain incidents which were not nice at all happened during the campaign which hurt me directly, and which you surely will not enjoy."
"We were two female candidates on the second district. It disappoints me to say that more promotion, especially on party media, was given to the other candidate, while I was pushed aside and almost dropped by the wayside. My election result reflects this," Borg wrote on social media.
Bernice Bonello was the only other female candidate for the PN on the second district – a notorious Labour Party stronghold.
Borg achieved just 152 first count votes in this district, while Bonello achieved 440 votes – a number which continued to rise significantly as the counts went on.
While Borg was ultimately knocked out of the running with 248 votes on the 11th count, Bonello was one of the six PN MPs who achieved a high enough percentage of her district quota to be elected to Parliament through the gender corrective mechanism.
“Not only was I discriminated against, but my dignity was trampled upon. Instead of helping me to continue working amongst the people, they squeezed me and threw me away,” she said.
It is because of this, she said, that she will be resigning from the PN and continuing to serve on the Xghajra local council as an independent councillor.
Borg was the PN’s only councillor in the locality, having been the only person to actually contest the local council election in Xghajra under the PN’s banner in 2019. This now means that the village of Xghajra now has absolutely no PN representation in its local council.