'Does Malta have a shot at clean politics?' - the Momentum edition - The Critical Angle Project

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‘Does Malta have a shot at clean politics?’ – the Momentum edition

By Julian Delia（https://cap.mt/author/julian/） August 31, 2025 No Comments（https://cap.mt/2025/08/31/does-malta-have-a-shot-at-clean-politics-the-momentum-edition/#respond） 37 min read

Home（https://cap.mt/） » News（https://cap.mt/news/） » ‘Does Malta have a shot at clean politics?’ – the Momentum edition

Date of interview: 18/8/2025

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

So, first of all, thank you for giving us an hour of your time.

You already have a general idea of what my line of questioning will be based on. But, for the benefit of our viewers, I’ll explain what the premise is.

The biggest interest I have in this conversation stems from the fact that the numbers are painting a very clear picture.

There is about a third of Malta’s electorate which has clearly and consistently shown that it is no longer interested in the major parties.

They don’t want to hear about the Labour Party nor the Nationalist Party.

On 14 June, you published a very interesting statement. You described Momentum as “Malta’s real opposition.”

You clearly saw the Nationalist Party and the current state it is in and you stepped up to the plate with this press statement.

Now, these voters we mentioned want a political alternative. They will be looking at you, at ADPD, and any other parties which may rise in the future.

You are presenting yourselves as a new party…in fact, you’ve been on the scene for how long now? Less than a year?

“Since January, so eight months by now.”

So, it’s my impression that your ‘new’ party was built around the momentum that was generated by Arnold Cassola’s independent run for an MEP seat. Cassola was kind of a lightning rod for the support that built your party.

So, my first question to you is this: what is Momentum going to offer to voters that is different enough to succeed where your most successful candidate didn’t?

“Okay, so, first of all – hello. I’m not so popular in Malta’s political scene yet. My role is secretary-general of Partit Momentum.

I was one of the first who put in a lot of effort to form this party. Arnold is the leader of the party. He is the most experienced one among us. We look up to him for his knowledge, for his ability to communicate and debate. He has around 40 years of experience in local politics.

He also has a set of accomplishments to speak of: among them, as the most popular independent candidate in Maltese history, and also the most popular third party candidate to date.

Obviously, he brings a lot of knowledge that we build upon, but the party isn’t Arnold. The MEP campaign started with a small team of four people. Obviously, we were very involved with organising that campaign and providing other forms of support.

The result we obtained wasn’t what we wanted – obviously, we wanted him to be elected, but we got very close to that..including second-count votes, we got to a total of around 23,000 if I’m not mistaken.”

He had at least 13,000 first-count votes for sure.

“Exactly. So, what’s different this time around? Well, we weren’t there before, to begin with. While it’s true that Arnold is the only veteran among us, he is not Momentum. Momentum is a lot more.

I wanted to create a strong, credible platform that can be used to vote for this party’s candidates. That didn’t exist before. There were other parties beforehand – Arnold was in Alternattiva Demokratika. He was never a part of the ADPD version of the green party.”

Right, the post-merger party.

“Exactly. I am often asked about disagreements which happened between Sandra (Gauci) and Arnold, but these two never actually worked together. They were never members of the same party, to be clear.

So, these disagreements happened between different people who said things in the past. Having met both Arnold and Sandra, I believe that both of them are valid and credible. So, we’re a new group, we began in January, and our track record is obviously limited to our involvement in that MEP campaign.

Since then, more people have joined. And, as you said, the momentum we have from that campaign is also why we have our name.

What I’m trying to do, which I believe is essential, is build structure…when I look at the kind of disagreements which happened in the past, I don’t think there was the right structure to handle it.

When you have these kinds of disagreements, when you need to talk about how to be efficient and make decisions…you need structure. I am trying to bring in my own professional expertise that I’ve implemented in my business to ensure I have a healthy organisation.

I want the members of this party to work together productively and to come up with good ideas. We didn’t publish that statement you mentioned earlier because of the state that the Nationalist Party is in at the moment.

There are a lot of issues which they don’t talk about. You don’t hear them talking about construction or anything like that. We know they can’t do that because they are compromised.

These parties are being funded by the same people we are criticising. Obviously, I don’t think that can work. There are certain things which you just shouldn’t do. Even just looking at the Nationalist Party’s ongoing leadership campaign – if you look at their videos, they are using the same venues which everyone’s criticising because of the illegalities they have on their properties.”

Understood. I’ll be asking you about party financing and the historical split between Alternattiva Demokratika and how that split eventually led to the creation of a new party.

But, before doing that, I wanted to ask you a few more basic questions.

When you talk about your candidates, how many candidates will be representing your party? Let’s start from that.

“Currently, we have four candidates who are willing to run on our ticket. Everyone knows that finding candidates is the biggest challenge any third party will ever have.

A group photo of Partit Momentum’s team. Photo: Partit Momentum

We have lots of volunteers – everyone wants to help, everyone wants to do something, but most people want to help behind the scenes. There is a certain fear of being seen.

Now, obviously, in terms of strategy, a lot of this depends on when the general elections will be held. As far as we know, the elections haven’t been announced yet, and it will all depend on what we’ve managed to achieve until then.

Our strategy will change according to what is needed in that particular situation. I want to encourage a lot of people to participate. Obviously, the more, the merrier…there are a lot of very valid people who talk to us a lot, but there is a lot of hesitation about things like being in front of a camera and so on.

Where do you think this hesitation is coming from?

“Based on what people tell me, work comes up often. People are afraid of losing their job or suffering some sort of retaliation. I think that’s one of the biggest ones. Generally, being in the public eye does have some downsides. It is a sacrifice.

Everyone has a lot of things to do. We all know that if you have commitments like a (house) loan, you need to work very hard to keep up. This is all voluntary work. So, a lot of the people we talk to usually want to help – sometimes, they’ll participate in a discussion or send us a donation – which is good, because we need everyone’s ideas.

But, obviously, the more we get people who are willing to become candidates, the better. They do need to be valid people. There is a process, including for our volunteers. When someone approaches us to help, there’s an interview process.

This helps us ensure we are not sacrificing our values. I would not have done any of the work I did for this party if the values I believe in weren’t on our website. I joined because I want to see something different from what I’ve seen so far.

If that wasn’t the case, I’d continue doing what I do for work – I’ve got enough to do. I don’t feel represented…I remember when I would try to think about who to vote for, I’d write my values in a column on a spreadsheet and write down the names of candidates next to them, and give them ratings according to how they fit in. But, I felt like the list was lacking. I couldn’t find what I was looking for.”

Right, you couldn’t find anyone who could represent you in this spreadsheet.

“There were some, but there weren’t enough. You can still come up with a score at the end. I always felt there was a need for this party to exist. I always had an interest in following the news and figuring out what’s going on, too.

I think that principles can never be sacrificed. There are certain lines which shouldn’t be crossed. Even talking with people in the Opposition about this…they’ll tell you that you need to do certain things because otherwise, you won’t be able to function without enough funding.

No, sorry, but that’s a line I just won’t ever cross. I won’t sacrifice my values, and I feel that we need to give that option to the electorate.”

I’m an eternal optimist – even here, at work, that’s how everyone refers to me. I believe that, if you do things right, you can succeed. There’s no need to be evil to achieve something. And I want to prove it.

Right, it’s interesting that you’d mention this point. In fact, I was going to ask you about your level of financing and how it compares with what you have.

In your press statement, you’d said something very similar to what you just said.

I’d like to quote you on this – because I think you’re the one who wrote it:

‘We will not be bought by unscrupulous developers. We will never abandon our principles. And we shall always be there to speak and act for the people.’

Now, naturally, I myself as a voter who is heavily disillusioned by the major parties’ hegemony, that is a statement that I can sympathise with a lot. I am drawn to it.

But, having said that, we are talking about general elections here, where, as I’m sure you know, major parties have big war chests at their disposal.

In material terms, it is very difficult for you to compete with that kind of spending power.

How are you going to present yourselves, in that context? As in, how are you going to compete with parties who’ve achieved that kind of scale?

“I feel like in the MEP elections, on some level, we did manage to compete. Obviously, it’s different from general elections, because you don’t have districts and so on. However, in the last 40 days or so of that campaign, a lot of people showed up to help us.

We also saw a spike in donations over those last few days. I don’t remember the exact figures of what we collected, but we published everything（https://arnoldcassola.eu/mt/rapport-ta-trasparenza-finanzjarja/） on our website.

We need donations. We receive them online, and it’s a transparent system: every transaction is recorded, and we publish everything. We don’t have a TV marathon where nobody knows where the money is coming from.

What is essential is the efficient use of whatever money and resources you have. This is something that Arnold mentioned had happened in the past; a lot of people wanted to help, but if you fail to channel that energy into meaningful things, it’s lost.

I’ve literally had people tell me that they don’t know where to start or what to do. I have a background in recruitment, and I see parallels between that and politics. I set up a career site that shows which roles are needed, and a lot of people applied. They were all assigned a role.

Everything is organised in a WhatsApp community with different groups for different tasks. Having a good organisational structure will allow us to achieve more. We can be more efficient with what little resources we have.

Even with simple things like publishing a video – the attitude is ‘roll up your sleeves and do it yourself.’ What needs to be done, must be done. A marketing company might take a €6,000 cut from your project to do it for you.

So, we are as efficient as possible, we put in as much effort as possible…if we channel all that energy, we can get where we want to get. Besides money, members are what makes up a party. It’s not enough to have a lot of money at your disposal if you’re going to just waste it.

This also happens in business – if you’re funding-based and you spend all your money recklessly, your business will perish quickly, like so many do.

I think that, if we work prudently, we can have a huge impact. We mentioned the number of candidates earlier; even if we don’t get a large number of candidates, we can still make an impact with what we’d have. Our strategy would be built around them so we can maximise what we can achieve.”

What’s your target for these general elections? I also want to ask about how many supporting members you would like to get, but let’s start with the number of candidates first.

“Ideally, we’d cover every district, so everyone who wants to support us would be able to do so. Each candidate can cover up to two districts, so there’s a number of candidates you need for that.

However, I spoke with people from other parties – third parties, obviously, not the big ones – and I don’t exclude being smart about how we spread ourselves out along district lines.

It could be a good strategy to say, for example, if there’s a district where ADPD is really strong, or we are strong, then we can avoid affecting each other. We don’t exclude that option. I spoke to them. It’s still early since no general elections have been announced yet, but we will need to find the best solution.”

Okay, I’ll be asking you about that a bit later as well.

In fact, I wanted to ask you about whether you are willing to engage in a coalition, or at least find some sort of way to spread yourselves out, as you said…

“…and I think I’m answering your question.”

…sure, but I’ll still be asking you more about it.

Going back to the number of registered members for a second: can you give me at least a vague idea of how many people we’re talking about?

“There are around 70 registered members. I’m noticing that people don’t really want to register as members. I feel like the idea of “registering” with a party feels a bit old-fashioned. I’ve never been a registered member of any party, and if anyone asked me to do that before, I would have said no.

I choose who to vote for and that’s it, so I thought that maybe having a membership card is too old-fashioned. There are a lot who donate but do not subscribe, because it’s the subscription that makes you a member.

If you compare it to the fee that major parties ask for, it’s quite expensive, because we ask for €30 a year, whereas big parties ask for €5 a year, I think…though probably, if you talk to the people who are responsible for collecting that fee, they might tell you that they spent that sum on just collecting it.

Our model is different. I think there’s been a change in the way people think about party membership. Obviously, the more people we get, the better. A subscription helps more than a donation does because you have some form of guarantee that what you collected last year will also be collected this year.

Other than that, small donations come in quite often, and I am not so fussed on increasing the number of registered members.”

Okay…your model is different to the registry model, it will have different categories of supporters who will follow in different ways.

“Exactly, it’s for people who might not be so inclined towards the traditional model.”

Okay, sure.

Let me go back to the point I wanted to make about the coalition I mentioned earlier.

You did give me a partial answer to that question, in the sense that you just mentioned that there were informal discussions between you and ADPD.

“Yes. We also spoke to independent candidates, too.”

Okay, that’s a good sign. But I want more detail about how your party was born from this split…

“Arnold split from Alternattiva Demokratika a long time ago now.”

Okay, that’s true, but Arnold became an independent candidate from that point onward. I understand that some time passed between one and the other, but the fact is that had Arnold not decided to leave, we’d just have ADPD, not two parties.

ADPD obtained a pretty positive result during the last local council elections.

The party’s chairperson, Sandra Gauci, was elected in St Paul’s Bay, while Ralph Cassar was elected on Attard’s local council.

From your end, the fledgling campaign you’d built around Arnold’s candidacy was quite impressive, too, especially with 13,000 votes on the first count.

I think Arnold’s MEP run was one of the only elections in recent memory in which real hope was invested in an independent candidate.

From my point of view, the upcoming general elections are probably the best chance any third party has ever had to elect a candidate to Malta’s Parliament.

I think, to some extent, these elections are almost existential for you, and for everyone really, including major parties.

In my opinion, I think you would stand a good chance if your parties had to unite in a formal coalition.

Were there any conversations about this subject?

“Yes, there were conversations. We have not closed any doors, either way, so it is on the table and it’s possible that it might happen.

But, the general elections have not been announced yet. Though it’s true that it may be around the corner, there’s so much we need to do before we think about a coalition. There’s a lot of people who don’t even want to vote, for example. We need to convince them first.

There are those who are disillusioned by both major parties, many of whom tell us that they are not yet ready to vote for ADPD or for us. Those are people we need to convince. I can either (quote/unquote) “waste” my time trying to influence other parties, but the gap is so huge. No third party has ever managed to swing past 3%.

At this stage, I don’t want to waste my energy on planning a coalition when there are so many people I need to talk to before then. There will come a time when we need to talk about where we agree and disagree, and some of these conversations are already happening.

You mentioned the ‘split’ from AD. We were not created because of the split from AD.