Joseph Muscat
Joseph Muscat is a Maltese politician who served as the 13th prime minister of Malta from 2013 to 2020 and leader of the Labour Party from 2008 to 2020.
Muscat was first elected Prime Minister in March 2013 with 54.83% and re-elected in June 2017 with 55.04%. Previously he was a member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2008. He was the leader of the opposition from October 2008 to March 2013. Muscat identifies as a progressive and liberal politician, with pro-business leanings, and has been associated with both economically liberal and socially liberal policies.
Muscat succeeded Alfred Sant as party leader in June 2008. He rebranded the Labour Party, which embraced an increasingly socially liberal and centrist position. His premiership was marked for pulling together a national consensus for economic growth, based on a restructured Maltese economy. His administration led to large-scale changes to welfare and civil liberties, including the legalisation of same-sex marriage in July 2017 and the legalisation of medical cannabis in March 2018.
Muscat presided over the rise of the Labour Party and its dominance in Maltese politics, and the relative decline of the Nationalist Party. He has been criticised by figures on both the left and right, and has been accused of political opportunism, broken promises on meritocracy and the environment, as well as corruption allegations.
On 1 December 2019, under pressure from the 2019 street protests calling for his resignation in relation to the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Muscat announced his resignation, and stepped down on 13 January 2020.
In May, 2024, Joseph Muscat together with Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri, and others were criminally charged with, among other things, bribery, criminal association, and money laundering in relation to Steward Health Care, Vitals Global Healthcare and the related Hospital contract controversy.
Joseph Muscat is the only leader of a Maltese political party to have won all the elections he contested, ten in a row, both as Leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister, between 2009 and 2019, defeating three leaders of the Nationalist Party - Lawrence Gonzi, Simon Busuttil and Adrian Delia.
Early life and career
Family
Muscat was born on 22 January 1974, in Pietà, Malta, to a Burmarrad family. He is an only child. With his father a fireworks importer, Muscat constantly referred to his family roots when describing his aversion to bureaucracy that hinders business. Muscat is married to Michelle Muscat and they are the parents of twins.Education
Muscat attended the Government Primary School in St. Paul's Bay, Stella Maris and St. Aloysius' College. Educated at St. Aloysius' in the 1980s, Muscat experienced the closure of Church schools by the Labour government of the day. This experience was reflected in the Labour party's 2013 manifesto with a pledge to continue financially supporting Church schools.Muscat graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce in Management and Public Policy, a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Public Policy, and a Master of Arts in European Studies. In 2007, he attained a Doctorate of Philosophy in Management Research from the University of Bristol with a thesis on Fordism, multinationals and SMEs in Malta, written during Muscat's term as MEP.
Politics
Muscat was a member of the youth section of the Labour Party, the Labour Youth Forum where he served as financial secretary and acting chairperson.During the Labour government of 1996–98 he was a member of the National Commission for Fiscal Morality and was considered a protégé of Mario Vella. He later served as education secretary in the central administration of the party and chairman of its annual general conference.
During his university years, from 1992 till 1997, Muscat worked as a journalist with the Labour Party's media arm, and founded the Party's now defunct news portal maltastar.com. He also worked as a journalist with the party's radio station, Super One Radio. He later took on a similar role at the Labour Party's Super One Television, chaired by Alfred Mifsud, becoming assistant head of news in 1996. Muscat wrote a regular column in L-Orizzont, a Maltese-language newspaper published by the General Workers' Union, as well as its sister Sunday weekly It-Torċa; he was a regular contributor to the independent newspaper The Times of Malta.
Upon graduation, in 1997 Muscat was employed as investment adviser by the Malta External Trade Corporation and soon after joined as market intelligence manager the newly established Institute for the Promotion of Small Enterprise under the Malta Development Corporation headed by Mario Vella; as he himself noted in his PhD thesis, in this post Muscat was effectively considered a political appointee and a person of trust of the ruling party. This situation made it harder for him to retain the confidence of the management after the return in power of the Nationalist Party in 1998 and the departure of Mario Vella from the MDC. He stayed in the position till 2001.
After staunchly campaigning against Malta's membership in the European Union at the 2003 referendum, the Labour Party lost its second general election in a row. In 2003, Muscat was nominated to a working group led by George Vella and Evarist Bartolo on the Labour Party's policies on the European Union. This working group produced the document Il-Partit Laburista u l-Unjoni Ewropea: Għall-Ġid tal-Maltin u l-Għawdxin which was adopted by the Labour Party Extraordinary General Conference in November of that year. The working group was instrumental in changing the Labour Party's eurosceptic policies, leading it to embrace a pro-EU stance. At this General Conference, Muscat was approved as a candidate for member of the European Parliament.
Member of the European Parliament (2004–2008)
Despite having previously expressed opposition to Malta's entry into the European Union, Muscat was elected to the European Parliament in the 2004 European Parliament election. He was the Labour Party candidate who received the most first-preference votes. Sitting as a Member of the European Parliament, with the Party of European Socialists, he held the post of Vice-President of the Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and substitute member of the committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection. He was a member of a number of delegations for relations with Belarus and with the countries of south-east Europe. He was also a member of the EU-Armenia, EU-Azerbaijan and EU-Georgia Parliamentary Cooperation Committees. As an MEP he supported a reduction in the tax for satellite television, the right for customers to watch sport events for free, and a number of issues related to environmental protection in Malta. He formed part of a team responsible for a report on the roaming mobile phone bills and sale of banks.In 2006, he was the recipient of the Outstanding Young Person of the Year. Muscat resigned his seat in the European Parliament in 2008 to take up a seat in the Maltese Parliament, and the role of Leader of the Opposition. Four months previously, he had been elected Leader of the Labour Party. Before his resignation, the European Parliament adopted his report proposing new regulations for the EU's financial services sector.
Leader of Labour Party
On 24 March 2008 Muscat announced his candidacy for the post of party leader, to replace Alfred Sant, who had resigned after a third consecutive defeat for the Party in the March 2008 general election and a heavy defeat in the EU referendum in March 2003. Muscat's vision for the Labour party was that of a positive, organised and forward-looking party that went beyond the confines of the party itself, forming the basis for a wider movement embracing all progressives and moderates together.Although at the time Muscat was not a member of the Maltese House of Representatives, he was elected as the new party leader on 6 June 2008. Muscat was just three votes short of winning the contest outright, obtaining 435 of the 874 valid votes cast, three fewer than the 438 needed. He garnered 49.8 per cent of valid votes cast while the combined number of votes of the other contestants was 50.2 per cent. In order to take up the post of Leader of the Opposition, Muscat was co-opted in the Maltese Parliament on 1 October 2008 to fill the seat vacated by Joseph Cuschieri for the purpose. The latter eventually took up the sixth seat allocated to Malta in the European Parliament once the Treaty of Lisbon was brought into effect in 2011. On taking up the Leadership post, Muscat introduced a number of changes to the Party, notably the change of official name and party emblem.
In November 2008, the General Conference of the Labour Party approved a new statute. A National Congress was created that was empowered with choosing the party's leader in the future and approving the electoral programme. Other changes included measures aimed at drawing more women and youths to the party's structures, lowering the party's membership age threshold to 16 and dissolving the Brigata Laburista and the party's Vigilance and Disciplinary Board.
Labour started 2009 with an innovative initiative. On 14 March, thousands visited the National Labour Center in Hamrun and the Labour Party Center in Victoria, Gozo to sign up for a court case urging the Nationalist government to refund the VAT charged on their car registration tax.
In the 2009 Maltese European Parliament Elections, the first with Muscat as Party Leader, Labour candidates obtained 55% of first-preferences against the 40% obtained by candidates of the Nationalist Party. Labour surpassed the Nationalist Party by almost 36,000 votes and elected three of the five Maltese MEPs.
Local council elections were also held in 2009 with the Labour Party obtaining almost 55% of votes cast.
2009 ended with an unusual visit to the National Labour Center by former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff. It was Mintoff's first visit to PL HQ since its opening in 1995. Muscat and Mintoff had a private meeting. The former Labour leader was also shown around the building where he saw the preparations for a fundraising marathon which was going to be held on the occasion of the thirty-fifth anniversary of Republic day.
Towards the end of 2010, it was revealed that Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and his Cabinet members had been receiving an increase of almost €600 a week in their salary since May 2008, when at the same time the government had imposed the highest ever water and utility bills in the country's history.
2011 will be remembered for the referendum held on the introduction of divorce in Malta. In July 2010 Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando presented a Private Member's Bill in Parliament to introduce divorce in Malta.
In February 2011 the Nationalist Party took an official stand against the introduction of divorce. One month later Joseph Muscat said that on a personal basis, he was going to campaigning for the introduction of divorce in Malta. The referendum was held on 28 May 2011. Just over 53% voted in favor of the introduction of divorce. The Labour Leader said that with this result, a new Malta was born and stressed that he was proud to have done what was right, instead of what was the least politically risky.
2012 started with the Nationalist government surviving a motion of no-confidence, with the casting vote of the Speaker, after Nationalist MP Franco Debono abstained. In March the Local Councils elections were won by Labour with 56% of the vote.
In May, Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici resigned after losing a no confidence vote, with Nationalist MP Franco Debono voting with the Labour Opposition. In June, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi accepted the resignation of Malta's ambassador to the EU Richard Cachia Caruana, after Nationalist backbencher Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando voted in favour of an opposition motion of censure against Cachia Caruana. The motion was carried by 35 votes in favour and 33 against after another government MP, Jesmond Mugliett, abstained. In July Pullicino Orlando resigned from the Nationalist Party and became an independent MP. Joseph Muscat said Lawrence Gonzi had officially lost his majority.
Between 14 and 23 September, in preparation for the general election which was approaching, the Labour Party convened the first National Congress in its history. The Congress discussed Labour's proposals for education, health, energy, environment, economy and civil rights, among others.
On 10 December 2012 Nationalist MP Franco Debono voted against the 2013 Budget, effectively bringing down the Nationalist government. The day after Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi held a 45-minute meeting with President George Abela and advised him to dissolve Parliament on 7 January 2013.