The casual elections to fill up seats vacated by Labour Party candidates who were elected twice will be held this morning at the Naxxar counting hall. In all, eight candidates will be filling up seats vacated by Labour MPs who were elected from two districts.
With the controversy surrounding Nationalist Party leader Alex Borg, little attention has been given to the decisions taken by the Labour Party executive committee as to which districts were given up.
PN leader Borg was elected on the 12th and 13th districts, with the PN statute stipulating that candidates elected twice must relinquish the seat in the district where they obtained the lower number of first count votes as a percentage of the respective district quota.
Borg's percentage tally was lower in his home district, the 13th, but he gave up the 12th. It was explained that, being leader, he did not have to go through the normal channels to be accepted as a candidate, and this therefore enabled him to keep the 13th district and relinquish the 12th, a move that was criticised by the Labour Party.
The PL has a different way of choosing which seats are given up by their candidates who are elected twice. In its case, according to its statute, it is the PL's executive which has the final say. Rather than a mathematical system, the PL binds itself with the human element, with members of the executive deciding the way forward.
And, as usually happens, strings are pulled one way or the other for the Labour Party to pick and choose which candidates it wants to push and which others it wants to eliminate. This time, the worst off were candidates on Districts 4, 5, 6 and 10 which were not given a second chance to be elected.
Elections will therefore be held this morning on Districts 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 (two seats), 11 and 12.
No PL candidate elected on District 1 and District 13 obtained a second seat anywhere else.
The decisions taken by the PL were as follows:
Prime Minister Robert Abela, who was elected in the 2 and 5 districts, will give up his District 2 seat.
Chris Fearne, elected in the 3 and 4 districts, will give up his District 3 seat.
Ian Borg, elected in the 6 and 7 districts, will give up his District 7 seat.
Clyde Caruana, elected in the 2 and 8 districts, will give up his District 8 seat.
Clifton Grima and Michael Falzon, both elected in the 9 and 10 districts, will each give up their District 9 seat.
Miriam Dalli, elected in the 5 and 11 districts, will give up her District 11 seat.
Jonathan Attard, elected in the 4 and 12 districts, will give up his District 12 seat.
It is immediately noticeable that the PL was selective in its choices.
For example, both Prime Minister Robert Abela and Finance Minister Clyde Caruana were elected in District 2, with Abela then getting a seat on District 5 and Caruana getting his second on district 8.
In this case, Abela gave up his District 2 place and Caruana the 8th, meaning that the party has given a possibility to unelected candidates on these two districts to fight it out in the casual election.
On District 2, candidates like James Grech and Rodrick Zerafa start as favourites in this particular race, while Ramona Attard and Yana Borg Debono Grech are likely front-runners on District 8.
But the PL took a different road in other situations.
Unelected candidates on District 4, 5, 6 and District 10 must be disappointed that the party did not give them a chance they could have had. Those elected in District 4, 5 and 10 were doubly hurt as two candidates could have been asked to give up their seat there, and yet neither of them did.
Chris Fearne was elected on District 3 and District 4, and will be keeping the 4th, while Jonathan Attard was elected on District 4 and District 12, and will be keeping the 4th too.
Sources who spoke to The Malta Independent said that the party should have at least decided for one between Fearne and Attard to give up their seat on District 4. As it happened, the PL has neglected a district where is has already suffered an upset, given that it lost one seat here.
In 2022, the PL had obtained a 4-1 majority on District 4, but in 2026 that changed to a 3-2 distribution. "The party has dealt another blow to its Labour supporters on district 4," one source said.
Andy Ellul should be making it to Parliament from District 3, with Franco Mercieca and Carlos Zarb in with a good chance on District 12.
The same goes for District 5. The PL executive ruled that Robert Abela and Miriam Dalli both keep their seats in this district, which means that the party has chosen not to give one of its strongholds another place in the House. Unelected candidates on District 5 were not given a second chance.
A similar situation has happened on District 9 and 10. Here, both Michael Falzon and Clifton Grima won two seats each, but rather than "divide" the spoils, the PL executive decided that both Falzon and Grima retain their seat on the 10th district.
In this way, the party has opened up the possibility for a return of Rebecca Buttigieg and newcomer Clint Azzopardi Flores, while ignoring the chance that the PL could have a third candidate from the 10th district, a Nationalist stronghold.
A similar decision had been taken in 2022 when Falzon and Grima had obtained the same result. By both retaining their 10th district seat, they had effectively eliminated Evarist Bartolo from the running.
The party should respect all voters in all districts, our sources said. As it happens, the PL executive is making choices rather than the people, they added.
Added to this, while some candidates have been given two chances in these casual elections, others have been given none, the sources said.
With regard to other districts, Naomi Cachia and Samantha Pace Gasan will fight it out for Ian Borg's seat on District 7, while Alex Muscat is the hot favourite for the seat vacated by Miriam Dalli on the 11th.