Former parliamentary secretary Edwin Vassallo and former MP Peter Micallef will take on the two new MP seats won by the Nationalist Party following a decision by the Electoral Commission today.

The commission met to decide on the way forward following yesterday’s Constitutional Court's decision granting two extra parliamentary seats to the PN, at the end of a bitter legal battle spawned from a mistake in the 2013 general election count. 

Sources said the commission was legally advised against opting for co-option, a route apparently preferred by the PN administration. 

Senior legal sources said that since, according to the last electoral results, it was only Mr Vassallo who remained unelected with a vote surplus, there was no doubt the Mosta mayor would become an MP again. Dr Micallef won a seat to parliament after he was the candidate with the highest number of votes among those who had been eliminated.

In a statement, the PN said that the gap between the two parties in parliament went down from nine seats from the last election to five. 

"The PN would continue working to provide a voice for everybody and to continue working to create concrete proposals."

Speculation among the PN ranks had already started yesterday on who was most likely to be co-opted to Parliament, ironically just in time to start campaigning for the next general election.

PN sources said the choice would most probably have been between two women candidates: Ann Fenech, the president of the executive committee, and Simone Vella Lenicker, an architect who recently drafted the PN’s policy document on the environment.

While Dr Fenech, a leading maritime lawyer and an eloquent speaker, appears to enjoy a great deal of respect among the PN’s rank and file, Ms Vella Lenicker, the daughter of Planning Authority chairman Vince Cassar, is considered to be an asset for attracting votes from the environmental lobby.