Cacopardo ‘Not Surprised’ by PN Vote Row: Malta’s Latest Political Storm Explained

Cacopardo ‘not surprised’ by PN voters dispute, says he was told he could vote
By Hot Malta Staff

Sliema’s coffee shops were still humming with post-election cappuccino post-mortems when Arnold Cassola dropped the bombshell: “Hundreds of non-members appear on the PN electoral list.” Within minutes, the phone rang in Carmel Cacopardo’s Valletta apartment. “Did you vote?” a friend asked. The former ADPD chair—long considered the conscience of Malta’s green movement—answered calmly: “Yes, and I was told I was eligible.”

Speaking exclusively to Hot Malta on Tuesday afternoon, Cacopardo said the unfolding Nationalist Party membership farce “neither shocks nor disappoints” him. “Maltese politics has always been a village festa with a velvet rope,” he shrugged, sipping a Kinnie zero outside Café Cordina. “Sometimes the bouncer lets you in if your face fits, sometimes if your cousin’s face fits. Rules are written in pencil so they can be rubbed out faster than a festa banner in the rain.”

The row erupted after Cassola requested the full PN delegate list for this weekend’s leadership election and discovered names of people who, he claims, never paid the €15 membership fee. One of them was Cacopardo, who left the PN in 1989 and later helped found Alternattiva Demokratika. Yet on 18 May he received an official email inviting him to vote. “I double-checked with the district secretary,” Cacopardo told us. “He said, ‘Your name is there, you’re entitled.’ So I queued at the Naxxar counting hall, showed my ID, and cast my preference. Now they say I shouldn’t have. It’s like inviting someone to your wedding and complaining they ate the prawns.”

Local political analysts say the episode exposes a deeper Maltese malady: the blurring of party membership with personal patronage. “In Malta, party cards are often family heirlooms, passed around like lace fans at a parish procession,” says sociologist Dr Maria Grech. “The PN, desperate to appear inclusive after two electoral drubbings, widened the gate but forgot to fix the hinges.”

The timing is awkward. The Nationalist Party is selecting a leader to take on Robert Abela’s Labour juggernaut amid fears the PN is sliding into irrelevance. Instead of policy debates, television panels are dissecting Excel spreadsheets of dubious voters. “We look like amateur carnival organisers arguing over who paid for the confetti,” one PN councillor from Żebbuġ confessed, requesting anonymity.

For ordinary Maltese, the spectacle feeds a growing cynicism. “My son asked if he can vote too, since names seem to appear by magic,” joked Marthese Borg, a Birkirkara pharmacy owner. “I told him only if Saint Publius personally endorses him.” Others fear international embarrassment. “Investors read this and think we run politics like a ħobż biż-żejt stall—first come, first served,” complained Pierre Muscat, a fintech recruiter.

Cacopardo, ever the environmental campaigner, framed the scandal in ecological terms. “A party is an ecosystem. When you introduce invasive species—fake members—the native ones suffocate. The PN risks becoming a field overrun with plastic bottles after a festa: colourful, but ultimately polluting itself.”

Yet he stops short of demanding police intervention. “I won’t play the martyr. The real victims are genuine activists who spent years canvassing only to see their vote diluted. My advice to the PN? Publish the entire list, scrub it transparently, and rerun the election if necessary. Painful, yes, but cathartic—like scraping rust off a traditional luzzu before repainting.”

As the sun set over the Grand Harbour, Cacopardo headed to a booked-out Qawra hotel where ADPD veterans were gathering to watch an environmental documentary. “Malta deserves a grown-up opposition,” he said, boarding the bus. “Until then, we’ll keep sipping Kinnie and reminding the big parties that the country is bigger than their membership lists.”

Whether the PN listens remains to be seen. But on an island where everyone knows someone who knows someone, the episode confirms an old adage: in Maltese politics, the surprise isn’t that the list was rigged—it’s that someone finally checked it twice.