Malta’s PM Sworn In After Labour Party’s Landslide Election Win

Malta’s Prime Minister Robert Abela has been sworn in after a landslide victory in elections that delivered his Labour party a third term in government.

Labour won 55.11 percent of the vote, final results showed on Sunday – a bigger win than in 2017 or 2013 despite low turnout and the legacy of scandal over the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

It was the first electoral test for Abela, a 44-year-old lawyer, since he took the helm of the Mediterranean island nation in January 2020 following a Labour party vote.

His predecessor Joseph Muscat was forced to quit after being accused of shielding his allies from the investigation into Caruana Galizia’s 2017 assassination in a car bomb.

She had accused top members of Muscat’s administration of corruption. A public inquiry last year accused the state of creating a “climate of impunity” in which she was killed.

In Saturday’s vote, Labour secured a majority of almost 40,000 votes over its Nationalist Party rivals – a huge margin in the EU state which has just 355,000 registered voters.

Vincent Marmara, a polling expert who lectures at the University of Malta, said it was “historic”.

“Considering that it was a lower turnout this year, the difference of 39,474 is a massive victory,” he told a local news agency.

The Electoral Commission confirmed turnout was 85.6 percent, the lowest in a Maltese general election since 1955 – and the first time it has dropped below 90 percent since 1966.