Conrad Borg Manché – who was once a popular mayor for the Labour Party – will contest the upcoming general elections with the Nationalist Party, The Malta Independent is informed.
Borg Manché will contest on the 10th electoral district which includes Gzira, Sliema, St Julian’s, part of Naxxar, and Pembroke and which is a historic Nationalist Party stronghold, and on the 5th electoral district, which includes Birżebbuġa, Kirkop, Safi, Qrendi, Żurrieq, and Mqabba.
The former Gzira mayor, who is a lawyer by profession, formally submitted his nomination with the Electoral Commission on Monday afternoon.
Borg Manché served as the mayor of Gzira between 2015 and 2024, and represented the Labour Party up until he resigned from the party in 2023.
He rose to prominence in 2016 when he fronted a public campaign together with several NGOs for access to be restored to the foreshore of Manoel Island and against other proposed developments which threatened the locality’s minimal amount of green spaces.
He also fought tooth and nail against the relocation of a petrol station to the locality’s only green lung – the Council of Europe Garden: a relocation which was blocked by the courts in April 2023.
Borg Manché resigned from the Labour Party in October 2023, saying that the party had left him with no other choice but to step away.
He had described his decision as “the most difficult decision I have ever made in my life,” but said that he was convinced that nobody within the party was disappointed by his decision “because they have always looked at me as someone extra, someone who is not a ‘yes’ man, and always resists.”
In his resignation letter, Borg Manché said that the PL had lost the scope for which it had been set up and that he hoped that the Labour Party will “find its soul” again.
The party had eventually replied with two sentences thanking him for his work and telling him that its doors remained open.
Borg Manché remained active in politics and he contested both the 2024 European Parliament elections and local council elections as an independent candidate.
He was elected to the Gzira local council at the first count, with 562 votes – making him the second most popular candidate in the locality. In the European Parliament elections, he managed to garner 5,936 first count votes nationwide.