Alex Borg’s First Mass Meeting: Can the New Leader Bridge Malta’s Generation Gap?
Watch live: Alex Borg addresses his first mass meeting as party leader
By Hot Malta Newsroom | 19:45 • 14 June 2024
Valletta’s Republic Street is already humming two hours before show-time. Pensioners perch on plastic yellow chairs clutching paper fans printed with the new party logo; teenagers in sleeveless tops weave between them selling ħobż biż-żejt and chilled Cisk from cooler boxes. By 19:00 the Triton Fountain roundabout is a solid wall of red and white umbrellas, flecked with the occasional EU flag—an accidental reminder that tonight’s speech will be parsed not just in Malta’s village bars but also in Brussels corridors.
At 20:15 sharp the brass band strikes up “L-Innu Malti” and Alex Borg steps onto the makeshift stage erected outside Parliament’s main door. It is exactly 42 days since the surprise resignation of his predecessor, and exactly 42 years since Borg’s own father led the same party’s youth wing in the 1982 snap-election campaign. The symmetry is not lost on the crowd; someone unfurls a hand-painted banner reading “Ta’ missieru, ma’ missirijietna” – “His father’s son, with our fathers”.
For non-locals, the scene can feel like a feast-day triduum transplanted into politics: village brass bands, roast-chestnut carts, toddlers asleep on grandfathers’ shoulders. But beneath the festa trimmings lies a country at a hinge moment. Labour still dominates the national polls, yet yesterday’s MaltaToday survey showed 38 % of 18- to 25-year-olds undecided—the highest slice of “floaters” since accession in 2004. Borg, 44, a Sliema-born lawyer who cut his teeth defending hunters in EU courts, is pitching himself as the bridge between those restless youths and the party’s traditional core: hunters, farmers, and the Gozitan artisan class.
“Tonight we speak Maltese, we think European, and we act Maltese,” Borg thunders in the opening cadence that zips across Facebook Live feeds from Nadur to Naxxar. The line draws cheers, but also a ripple of WhatsApp voice notes in hunting chat-groups: Will he really resist Brussels’ autumn finch-trapping ban? Borg answers obliquely, promising “a citizen’s veto on every Brussels directive that touches our cliffs, our birds, our Sunday morning rituals.”
The cultural undertow is impossible to miss. Mid-June is lull-season for tourism but peak season for village festas; tonight’s rally competes directly with the St Anthony procession in Għarb and the fireworks factory final rehearsal in Mqabba. Yet supporters have prioritised. “I left the statue halfway through decorating,” admits 63-year-old Peppa from Żebbuġ, gold braid still stuck to her fingertips. “We need to hear if this man understands the price of rabbit feed, not just Ryanair routes.”
Economically, Borg threads a delicate needle. He praises the Labour government’s 5.6 % GDP growth, then pivots to “the invisible inflation” gnawing at pensioners who converted their BOV savings into 0.3 % term deposits. A pledge to zero-tax pension income under €15,000 triggers the loudest cheer so far—louder even than the hunting rhetoric. It is a reminder that, beneath the tribal colours, Malta’s greying electorate remains the most reliable voting bloc.
Yet the most telling moment comes off-camera. At 21:30 the broadcast feed cuts to a 30-second buffer loop while Borg fields questions from party media. A teenage girl wearing a crop-top stamped “Fridays for Future” asks whether he will subsidise rooftop solar now that the EU has scrapped the 20 % grant. Borg pauses, glances at the party treasurer, and promises “a solar-for-youths bond you can trade like a football sticker.” The answer is half-joke, half-policy, but the girl walks away grinning; her 400 TikTok followers receive an instant clip titled “Borg gets Gen-Z finance”.
By 22:00 the band launches into a souped-up techno version of “Viva l-Partit Nazzjonalista”. Fireworks crackle above the Grand Harbour, competing with the official Valletta 2018 pyro-show left over from the cultural-capital stockpile. As the crowd disperses, the bars along Strait Street fill with post-mortems. “He talks like a lawyer, but at least he showed up,” says a taxi driver nursing a Ċisk. Whether that translates into first-time votes will depend less on tonight’s applause meters than on the Whatsable clips now racing across 286 village group chats.
Conclusion
Alex Borg’s debut mass meeting was less a policy manifesto than a carefully choreographed cultural overture: part festa, part TED-talk, part family reunion. In a country where politics is woven into feast-day fireworks and rabbit-stew Sundays, Borg’s challenge is to convert carnival energy into concrete ballots. Tonight he proved he can fill a square; the harder test comes in September when the floating 38 % must decide whether a lawyer who defends hunters can also defend their climate-stressed future. Until then, the red-and-white bunting will stay strung across balconies—Republic Street’s way of saying the conversation has only just begun.
