PN Leadership Countdown: Alex Borg & Adrian Delia Make Final Pitches in Historic Maltese Showdown

Alex Borg, Adrian Delia in Final Appeal for Votes as New Leader Elected Today

Valletta’s narrow limestone alleys echoed with last-minute arguments and the rustle of party flyers this morning as the Nationalist Party (PN) closes one of the most turbulent leadership races in its modern history. By 6 p.m. today, either Alex Borg or Adrian Delia will walk out of the party’s Pietà headquarters clutching the keys to a movement that has shaped Maltese life since 1880—and that now faces the delicate task of rebuilding trust after five bruising years in Opposition.

For those sipping espresso outside the Upper Barrakka cafés, the contest feels less like a routine party election and more like a national soap opera. Delia, the charismatic Sliema lawyer who was ousted in 2020 and now seeks an unlikely comeback, spent yesterday evening doing the rounds in Qormi’s vegetable market, kissing babies and promising “a PN that speaks the language of the kitchen table.” Borg, the party’s clean-cut administrative general-secretary, chose the quieter courtyards of Żabbar, reminding elderly supporters that “continuity and unity” are the only antidotes to Labour’s electoral machine.

Both men know that the margin will be razor-thin. Roughly 16,000 paid-up tesserati are eligible to cast a ballot—about the same number of people who squeeze into the Floriana granaries for the Isle of MTV concert every July. Yet the cultural stakes dwarf the head-count. The PN is woven into Malta’s DNA: its clubs still host festa band marches, its clubhouses double as village banda rehearsal halls, and its aging members remember when a party card was a passport to a government job or a subsidised ferry ticket to Sicily.

That’s why the final appeals were laced with unmistakable Maltese flavour. Delia’s closing video, filmed at the Dingli cliffs at sunset, featured a cameo from his mother stirring rabbit stew while reciting the rosary. Borg countered with a Facebook Live from a Gozitan farmhouse, cracking peppered ġbejniet and promising “a new chapter without burning the recipes that made us who we are.” The subtext: whichever man wins must reconcile the party’s Catholic-conservative base with younger voters who stream Netflix, support civil liberties, and measure success in tech start-ups rather in parish feasts.

Community impact is already visible. In Birkirkara, the PN club’s committee splintered last month after two rival WhatsApp groups—one pro-Delia, one pro-Borg—traded memes so savage that the parish priest had to mediate. Meanwhile, the tiny Għarb club in Gozo reported a 40 % spike in new memberships, mostly youths who want “a say before the boomers decide again,” as 23-year-old Luke Cini put it while waiting for the bus to Victoria.

Economically, businesses are watching closely. The party’s annual conference funnels hundreds of thousands of euros to Valletta hotels and caterers; a divided PN could also mean a longer spell in Opposition, delaying reforms to rental laws and gaming licences that many entrepreneurs crave. “We need stability,” sighed Martina Zammit, owner of a three-room boutique guesthouse in Sliema. “Tourists google ‘Malta politics’ before they book. If they see chaos, they choose Cyprus instead.”

Polling stations close at 7 p.m., with first projections expected by 10 p.m. The winner inherits a party whose headquarters still bears the scars of 2019’s protest fires, but also a grassroots network that can mobilise 1,000 volunteers for a coastal cleanup faster than any NGO. Tonight’s victory speech will be delivered from the same balcony where Eddie Fenech Adami proclaimed Malta’s EU accession in 2003—a reminder that, in this country, politics is always personal, always loud, and always within earshot of the village church bells.

By midnight, one of two men will accept a standing ovation beneath the chandeliers of Dar Ċentrali. The other will retreat to a side-street café, order a pastizz and a Kinnie, and begin planning tomorrow’s comeback. Either way, the true verdict will come not from the counting hall but from the piazzas, band clubs, and Facebook comment sections where Maltese democracy has always thrived. As an elderly voter in Rabat quipped while clutching his rosary beads, “Imma jekk ma niġbdux flimkien, l-aħħar ballu jkun tal-Karnival, mhux tal-PN.” If we don’t pull together, the last dance will be at Carnival, not at the PN.