Valletta has remained under Labour control but it will have a new mayor, Olaf McKay, who obtained more first count preferences than outgoing mayor Alfred Zammit.
This was one of the hotly-contested localities as votes for the first 23 local councils were counted at the Naxxar counting hall.
Another was St Paul's Bay, which was held by Labour, but which flipped to the PN. Former minister and PN MP Censu Galea is now the locality mayor.
The Nationalist Party remained in minority in Xewkija, Zurrieq, Qrendi, Birzebbuga and Dingli, but in these five localities the PN won a seat more than it did in 2019.
The voting in the local council elections confirmed the trend that was established in the MEP elections, in which the Labour Party saw its comfortable 42,000 lead drop to just 8,400. The Labour Party also lost one MEP seat to the PN.
Zebbug and Mellieha ended in a deadlock, as neither party obtained a majority of seats.
The mayor will be decided in the first meeting of the council.
The first verdicts of the afternoojn came from Gozo, where there are a number of small localities, but soon enough the unofficial outcome in other, bigger localities in Malta started to arrive.
The small village of Ghasri has been won by Labour for the first time, and this is the only locality in which the PL increased its number of seats. It was good news for Labour, but that was perhaps anticipated, given the circumstances of the last legislature.
Ghasri is the locality where, last time round, the Nationalist Party won a majority but the mayor, Daniel Attard, switched to Labour.
Attard contested for the PL and the village has turned politically red. Labour is set to win three seats to the PN's two.
In Gozo too, Nadur and Fontana retained a Nationalist majority.
Edward Said has remained mayor for the third consecutive time in Nadur, where the PN increased its number of seats to four. Thomas Mizzi was elected Fontana mayor.
Ghajnsielem and Fontana also remained a Nationalist majority, with a 4-1 seat result.
Mqabba, Qrendi and Dingli were retained by Labour. Raymond Schembri retains his seat as Dingli mayor, while David Michael Schembri remains mayor of Qrendi and Grace Marie Zerafa remains mayor of Mqabba. In Dingli and Qrendi, the Nationalist Party added a second seat, as Labour won 3-2 as against the 4-1 results in 2019.
Pembroke has also been won by Labour, with Kaylon Zammit is to become mayor. The election here was very close, with Pembroke retaining majority by some 50 votes. The Nationalist Party increased its tally of votes in this locality.
Xewkija also remains under Labour, with Simona Refalo, Minister Anton Refalo's daughter, to be mayor. The PN won a second seat in this locality, as against the one it had won in 2019.
Zurrieq, Tarxien, Birzebbuga, Zejtun, Ta' Xbiex and Marsa, as expected, were retained by Labour. Marsa has a new mayor, Luke Farrugia, while Joseph Abela Galea is the mayor of Tarxien. Zejtun's new mayor is Joan Agius. Santa Venera also remained under Labour control.
On the other side of the political fence, the PN retained St Julian's, Iklin and Balzan.
ADPD leader Sandra Gauci has earned a seat on the St Paul's Bay local council.
Official results may be found here
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Earlier
With the European election counting process having concluded, the attention now turns to the counting process for the local council elections.
All ballot boxes at the Naxxar counting hall were opened and the processing of the votes has begun.
Party delegates have gathered behind the perspex where elecotral assistant commissioners are displaying the votes one by one before passing them on for scanning.
The viewing of votes in the smaller localities will of course take much less, and there could soon be indications on how the residents in these localities voted.
The councils have been divided into three batches, with counting to take place today (23), tomorrow (22) and Friday (23).
It is only when the counting process is concluded Friday that we will have a clear picture of how the country voted.
One waits to see if there will be anything majorly different when compared to what happened last Sunday. Burning questions remain; if the discontent of Labour voters is, again, reflected in the upcoming vote counts and if ‘traditionally’ partisan strongholds have been won or lost.
Mdina is the only locality which already knows its set-up, as only five candidates applied to contest the election, and five are need. There are four PN candidates against the Labour Party's one.
An issue that has been brought up over the years was the trend of the Labour government to detract power from local councils, a situation that had also been pointed out by politicians, that one may argue could have contributed to the low local council turnout of 59.47%. Furthermore, 110,651 voting documents remained uncollected.
This local council election can also be said to be of more interest; short-term and long-term, with a wave of direct youth involvement, with Mayors potentially being around 16 years of age.
It will be the ultimate test for the youth involvement initiative: they may either bring much-needed change with their enthusiasm and young fervour or the status quo may prevail.
In this election process all eyes will also be on Siggiewi, following the recent 99 voter fraud/gerrymandering cases, where the Nationalist Party won all the cases it brought before the courts. The locality saw a neck and neck outcome last time round, where the Labour Party had won by a hairline majority of 50.64%.
At this point, it is pertinent to mention that the way Labour behaved in Siggiewi has already received flak in light of Sunday’s disastrous European election results with former MEP Marlene Mizzi throwing poorly veiled blame onto the Housing Minister, Rodrick Galdes.
The localities will be counted over separate days from the 12th to the 14th of June with a number of localities assigned to a particular day as follows;
