Yana Mintoff Bland, 60, one of Dom Mintoff's daughters, will be a candidate at the general elections, according to Cyrus Engerer, who is himself deeply involved in the organisation of the PL.

Mr Engerer revealed Dr Mintoff Bland's intentions on facebook.  The news could not be immediately confirmed by the PL. Dr Mintoff Bland could not be contacted.

Yana Mintoff Bland spoke of her admiration for Dr Muscat during the PL general conference last month and said her father was following events closely.

"I felt very good about it and I'm really impressed by what I saw," Dr Mintoff Bland, an economist and school administrator" said of the conference, which she attended with her sister.

At the time, the PL confirmed she was approached by Labour leader Joseph Muscat to become a special delegate for 2012. She was approached because of the contribution she could make the party, the spokesman said.  The presence of Mr Mintoff's two daughters was significant for a party that had to close the rift that developed between the party faithful and the former leader when he brought the Labour government down in 1998.

The spokesman said this was part of a "healing" process that has been going on for the past 15 years.

Dr Mintoff Bland is currently based in Malta after moving from the US to look after her father, who is 95.

Mr Engerer said that when he first met Dr Mintoff, at a dinner last year, he had realised that they shared a common vision for the future. "After she left and (I) got to know who she was, I immediately understood why her main concerns were workers, incentives to businesses for the creation of more jobs, a clean and sustainable environment and the introduction of more civil rights."

Dr Mintoff Bland never participated in local politics to date, but has an eventful history of political activism abroad. When aged 17 she worked as a youth volunteer with an organisation which opposed the Soviet military presence in Czechoslovakia.   

In the 1970s she took part in student protests against the military junta in Greece. In 1974 in a local case, she was reportedly involved in research for a UK television documentary about bribery in connection with British architect John Poulson and the building of Gozo hospital. She was also an activist for Irish and Palestinian causes and in 1978 was arrested by the British police and subsequently fined after she took part in a protest at the House of Commons during which horse manure was thrown at MPs. The protest was over the British military presence in N. Ireland.