Could Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando make it to the House for Labour?

The resignation of Labour minister Edward Scicluna from the House of Representatives could see the return of a former Nationalist MP, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, to the House. 

Pullicino Orlando, a Zebbug dentist who had once been a rising star in the PN, was a Labour candidate in the 2017 elections where he garnered a final count of 1,040 votes. 

He was surpassed by Gavin Gulia, a former Labour MP now chairman of the Malta Tourism Authority, with a final count of 1,569 votes; and the former Rabat mayor Charles Azzopardi, with 2,179 votes. 

All three candidates could be a shoo-in for the casual election that will introduce a new MP to the Labour bench after Edward Scicluna resigns his seat to take up the post of Central Bank governor. 

The three candidates also started the race at a similar amount of first-preference votes, with 574, 848 and 572 for Azzopardi, Gulia and Pullicino Orlando respectively. 

Pullicino Orlando had broken ranks with the PN in 2012 when he became an independent MP. In the 2008 election, the MP was embroiled in a scandal in which the Labour Party alleged he had influenced planning authority officials so as to facilitate the rental of his Mistra country land, for an open-air disco venue. Pullicino Orlando was still elected on both his districts despite the allegations, with the PN winning the election by a mere 1,500 votes. After being sidelined by the PN leadership, he embarked on a successful campaign for a divorce referendum. 

He is currently the executive chairman of the Malta Council for Science and Technology, a post he was appointed to in 2010, and which he retained after the 2013 election. He ran on a Labour ticket in the 2017 elections.

The former Labour MP Gavin Gulia was elected to the House in 1996 for Labour, but failed to be re-elected in 2017. He is the chairman of the Malta Tourism Authority.