Alex Borg unveils youngest shadow cabinet in Maltese history – meet the new PN front bench

Alex Borg’s “shadow cabinet” is no longer whispers in the Valletta cafés. On Sunday, flanked by the limestone façade of the Nationalist Party headquarters, the newly minted Opposition leader unveiled the team he says will hold Robert Abela’s government to account “from day one”. In a country where politics is a national sport, the line-up felt like the PN’s starting XI for a derby that could decide more than just three points.

Borg, 42, a lawyer from Żejtun who still plays five-a-side with his hometown club, kept only three members from Bernard Grech’s outgoing front bench. The headline move: handing 29-year-old Sliema mayor Graziella Attard Previ the finance brief. The youngest shadow minister in Maltese history, Attard Previ cut her teeth negotiating EU funds for coastal regeneration. “If she can stop Sliema’s pavements from turning into a pizza oven every August, maybe she can cool inflation too,” quipped a pensioner watching the livestream at City Gate.

The gender balance – seven women out of 16 portfolios – is unprecedented for the PN, whose grassroots committees in villages like Żurrieq and Naxxar have long been dominated by tal-pepe men in tailored blazers. Borg’s deputy, Birkirkara councillor Rebecca Buttigieg, will shadow the Home Affairs ministry, a post still haunted by the 2017 assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. “We need a generation that treats rule of law as a daily habit, not a Sunday sermon,” Buttigieg told reporters, code-switching effortlessly between Maltese and English, the bilingual dance every Millennial on the island knows by heart.

Most intriguing is the creation of a “Gozo & Island Communities” shadow ministry, given to Clint Camilleri look-alike Alex Muscat, a Gozitan teacher whose TikTok clips comparing Gozo Channel ferry prices to Ryanair tickets went viral last Christmas. Gozo, where 67 % of households rely on tourism, is still reeling from the collapse of the Azure Window and the pandemic’s punch to boutique farmhouses. Muscat’s brief: make sure every EU recovery euro lands on the sister island instead of disappearing into a black hole of “consultancy”.

Borg also reached outside Parliament, appointing environmental architect Annalise Falzon as shadow climate minister. Falzon, the brain behind the Valletta green-roof pilot that dropped apartment temperatures by four degrees last summer, will square off against Miriam Dalli. Expect fireworks when the proposed Hondoq ir-Rummien yacht marina resurfaces: Falzon has already crowdsourced 20,000 signatures against it, mostly from weekend swimmers who fear losing their last rocky perch for a Red Bull and a dip.

The cultural sub-text is hard to miss. By promoting candidates under 35, Borg is tapping into the TikTok electorate – the same cohort that turned Labour’s TikTok anthem “Abbozi” into ironic memes. Yet he also kept veteran Mario de Marco, who gets the tourism file, a nod to the PN’s silver-haired core that still remembers Eddie Fenech Adami’s 1987 victory speech from the same balcony. The balancing act mirrors Malta itself: a nation where 70-year-olds debate hunting seasons on Facebook while their grandkids stream Spotify playlists titled “Malta 2025”.

In the cafeterias of Junior College, where students fuel up on pastizzi between lectures, the reaction was mixed. “They look like the cast of a Netflix series shot in Birgu,” laughed 18-year-old media student Maya, “but I’ll judge them on whether buses actually turn up on time.” Her friend Omar, clutching a copy of the Times of Malta crossword, was harsher: “Shadow cabinets are like pastizzi without ricotta – flaky and empty unless they cost their own proposals.”

Borg’s challenge is to prove the metaphor wrong. With energy bills set to spike again in October and tourists already grumbling about €7 Cisk in Paceville, the Opposition has fertile ground. Whether the new line-up can speak to both the hunter in Dingli and the digital nomad in Sliema will decide if this shadow cabinet becomes a government-in-waiting or just another limestone reliefs – beautiful, but ultimately decorative.