Voting continues in the Maltese elections, the ruling party is expected to win | Political Affairs

The economic situation in Malta is expected to dominate this year’s elections, with rising rents and poor utilities as major concerns.

Voting has begun in Malta’s presidential election, which will determine who will rule the Mediterranean island nation for the next five years.

Polling stations opened on Saturday in what appeared to be a two-horse race between the ruling Labor Party and the centrist Nationalist Party.

Prime Minister Robert Abela, who leads the Labor Party, called the election a year before the Iran war agenda, which is affecting markets around the world.

Abela says he fears rising energy prices and inflation, caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, could undermine his party’s hopes of a fourth consecutive term in office.

The economy is expected to dominate this year’s election, with rising rents and deteriorating infrastructure at the forefront of many voters’ minds.

Malta’s Ministry of Health is also under increasing pressure due to the population of the smallest and most populous country in the European Union.

Recent polls show that Abela’s party is close to winning the election, while Labor has dominated Maltese politics for the past decade.

However, the new leader of the Nationalist Party, Alex Borg, is hoping to unseat Labor and become Malta’s oldest prime minister at the age of 30.

The election is taking place under the shadow of the murder of an investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galiziawho was killed by a car bomb in 2017.

Caruana Galizia exposed corruption in Malta, and her death led to the resignation of former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.

After a public investigation, they found that the government was the one who killed him, although they did not find any evidence that it was directly involved.

The report said that the government had created an “impunity environment”, which led those who killed Caruana Galizia to believe that they would not face the consequences of their actions.

In June 2025two men were sentenced to life in prison for supplying the bomb that killed him.

The election results are expected to be announced at noon on Sunday.