Divided Malta votes as corruption clouds bright outlook
VALLETTA: Maltese voters began casting their ballots yesterday in a general election called against a backdrop of corruption allegations that have cast a cloud over Joseph Muscat’s government and the otherwise bright outlook for the island nation.
Final opinion polls pointed to 43-year-old Muscat’s Labour Party (PL) retaining power with a reduced majority, four years after it swept into office on a redistributive, pro-business and socially liberal platform which has sustained Malta’s recent economic success story.
But with 20 to 30 per cent of the 341,856 registered voters still undecided in the final days of the campaign, analysts had not ruled out a surprise change of government as a result of the fallout from the so-called Panama Papers revelations.
Simon Busuttil, leader of the opposition Nationalist Party (PN), has framed the vote as a choice between change and allowing Malta’s international reputation, and its prosperity, to be shredded by a series of scandals.
Muscat went to the polls a year early after his wife Michelle Muscat was accused of being the beneficial owner of a secret Panamanian shell company used to bank unexplained payments from Azerbaijan’s ruling family.
The premier’s chief of staff and a government minister have separately admitted having their own, previously undeclared Panama-registered companies, following revelations from last year’s massive data leak from the Mossack Fonseca legal firm based in the Central American country. — AFP