Alex Borg’s Snap-Election War Cry: PN Says Malta’s Ready to Turn Blue

Alex Borg leans across the café table in Valletta’s Republic Square, the noon cannon still echoing off the limestone walls, and delivers the sentence every PN activist has been WhatsApp-ing each other since Easter: “We are capable of winning a snap election—today, tomorrow, whenever Robert Abela plucks up the courage.”

The former mayor of Żurrieq, now the party’s deputy secretary for grassroots mobilisation, is sipping a ħelwa tat-Tork coffee—no sugar, “because the message is already sweet enough”. Around us, tourists photograph the newly scaffolded Auberge de Castille, unaware that inside those honey-coloured blocks Labour strategists are gaming the same calendar Borg is talking about: the last possible weekend before the European Parliament count in June, the feast of St Peter and Paul in late June, or a dramatic September return after the village festa season quiets down.

Borg’s confidence is not plucked from the June sky. He reels off numbers: 3,400 new paid-up members since January, 70% under the age of 35; 42 local committees reactivated in what PN insiders call “the Għaxaq effect” after the council by-election that slashed Labour’s majority to 68 votes; and €380,000 crowdfunded in ten days to pay off the party’s old media bills. “We’re not chasing casual protest votes,” he insists. “We’re building a coalition that starts at the fishmarket in Marsa at 4 a.m. and ends with the gaming shift workers having ħobż biż-żejt in St Julian’s at 4 p.m.”

The cultural subtext is impossible to ignore. Malta’s summer is stitched together by festa fireworks and political band marches; every village square doubles as a campaign rally the moment the Archbishop’s band club finishes the last hymn. Borg, a banda enthusiast who still plays the flugelhorn in the Żurrieq Saint Catherine’s feast, knows that capturing the village core—those middle-aged men who carry the statue and the middle-aged women who raffle the ham—is the difference between a Facebook echo chamber and actual ballots. “When the statue of Our Lady comes out, people don’t see party colours, they see neighbours,” he says. “But the next morning they remember who turned up, who helped park the trucks, who sponsored the new damask cape.”

That granular approach is already shifting the conversation in traditional Labour strongholds. In Fgura, a town that voted 60% red in 2022, PN canvassers claim they collected 450 “pledge cards” on the single issue of over-development: residents whose terraced views have been replaced by five-storey flat blocks marketed to foreign buyers. Borg’s team has produced TikTok clips in Maltese, English and even a cheeky Libyan Arabic voice-over that joke about “the only thing rising faster than the sea level is the crane count”. The clips are shared in building-site WhatsApp groups where Egyptian and Syrian plasterers debate utility bills after 12-hour shifts. “If we speak their language literally and metaphorically, they’ll trust us with their citizenship vote,” Borg argues.

Yet the PN still carries the scar tissue of 2017’s 40,000-vote defeat and the ghost of 2019’s European election triumph that failed to translate into the general ballot. Older activists, nursing Cisk and pastizzi at the party club in Birkirkara, mutter that “surveys are selfies: they show you at your best angle but not the extra kilos”. Borg counters with internal polling he says puts the gap at 4.7%, within the margin of error once undecideds are pushed. “We’re not promising mint-new hospitals or phantom metro tunnels. We’re promising accountability: every minister’s contract online within 30 days, a public register of direct orders, and a whistle-blower protection law that actually pays rent while you wait to testify.”

The community impact is already visible. In Gozo, where the PN needs a 2,000-vote swing to flip three seats, village youth groups that once shunned politics are attending Saturday clean-ups rebranded as “Green PN”. The party is shipping recycled cardboard boxes to every locality so residents can dump glass bottles; the photo-ops double as voter-registration drives. “It’s not green-washing if the truck actually goes to the recycling plant,” laughs Borg, who personally supervised the first shipment in Xewkija.

Back in Valletta, the café owner refuses payment when he recognises Borg. “Just win, ta,” she whispers in Maltese, wiping almond crumbs from the counter. Walking out into the blistering sun, Borg turns for the last word: “The election will be called when Labour stops fearing us and starts fearing its own backbench. That moment is closer than the shade of the balconies.”

For a country where politics is the unofficial national sport, the next few weeks feel like extra time in a cup final: every whistle from Castille, every Facebook Live from Pieta’, every village festa firework could be the spark that forces the nation back to the ballot. One thing is certain—Alex Borg and the re-energised PN believe they are no longer the eternal bridesmaids of Maltese politics. Whether the voters agree will decide if summer 2024 ends with fireworks of celebration or just another smoky sky.