In Malta, Prime Minister Robert Abela's Social Democratic Labor Party won its third consecutive victory in Saturday's general elections.

According to the first count results on Sunday, the Labor Party has a lead of around eleven percentage points over the Conservative National Party of opposition leader Bernard Grech and can count on a further increased majority in Valletta.

Matthias Rub

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.

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Immediately after the partial results were announced, Grech admitted his defeat and congratulated Abela on his election victory.

The Greens and an independent list together accounted for about five percent of the vote.

The official election result will be announced this Monday.

At 85.5 percent, voter turnout was the lowest it had been since gaining independence from Great Britain in 1964, albeit high by international standards.

result of economic development

The Social Democrats, under their then top candidate Joseph Muscat, ousted the National Party from power in 2013.

Muscat was re-elected Prime Minister in the 2017 snap elections.

In January 2020, however, Muscat was forced to resign after weeks of protests over the slow investigation into the October 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Muscat was followed by the 44-year-old Abela as party and government leader.

Despite the unprecedented protests over the Caruana Galizia case, the opposition was unable to assert itself in early 2020 with its demand for the resignation of the government and new elections.

In its July 2021 report, an independent investigative commission found no direct involvement of members of the Muscat cabinet in the murder of the investigative reporter.

However, she blamed the Muscat government for her death because an "atmosphere of impunity" had spread around the ruling party, "the tentacles of which had spread to other institutions such as the police and supervisory authorities".

This eventually led to a "collapse of the rule of law" in Malta, the report said.

The fact that the Workers' Party was able to defend its power despite the murder case of Caruana Galizia, which has not yet been fully clarified, and despite numerous cases of corruption, is probably largely due to the good economic development of the past few years.

So far, the Labor government in Valletta has been able to cushion the consequences of the pandemic with generous support payments to households and companies.

There were also other social benefits such as constant increases in pensions, the freezing of electricity prices and the reduction of some tax rates.

The conservative National Party did not know how to counter this recipe for success with any convincing alternatives, either in terms of program or personnel.