Labour’s efforts to entice youths and women to politics were reaping fruits, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said on Saturday.

Speaking after the Labour Party secured a historic electoral margin in the local council elections on Friday night, Dr Muscat said he was excited about the results achieved by two PL programmes aimed at attracting youths and women to politics.

The PL, he said, had fielded nearly 100 youths for this election and out of these 16 had been elected as mayors and another 16 had made it to deputy mayor.

“We are ensuring that from the seeds we are sowing today, this movement will reap the benefits for years to come,” he said.

Dr Muscat said that some 98 per cent of the youth candidates which had come through Forum Zgħazagħ Laburisti’s START campaign, had been elected to local council seats.

Woman had also played a strong role in these council elections, with the PL electing 73 women. This meant that 27 per cent for the Labour councilors were women.

Around four in every five women who had participated in the PL’s LEAD programme, aimed at attracting women to politics, had been elected.

Romilda Baldacchino Zarb was last night elected Mayor of Mosta

“I cannot but thank [MEP] Miriam Dalli who headed this programme, which was a success,” Dr Muscat said.

He told the audience how some had said that when two of the PL’s four MEPs were women, and now that many of Labour's councillors were also women, that the reform to ensure more women were elected to parliament was not needed.

“But I say no, we need to be filled with energy, and we need to keep going until we reach parity, and half of our representatives are women,” he said.

This, Dr Muscat said, did not mean punishing men, but encouraging and promoting women to get the place they wanted and deserved.

The Labour leader said that when he had first seen the new faces of the first-time candidates the PL had put forward he had found that many were running precisely because of these new programmes.

“And so we need to continue with these efforts. To show that our doors are open to let people into our party and not to usher them out,” he said.

70 per cent of Malta is under Labour

Much of Dr Muscat’s speech focused on the “extraordinary” result of this local council election.

“I can’t but express my great satisfaction that the Labour Party has secured the greatest victory in Maltese history,” he said.

With 58 per cent of the vote, a lead of 18 points which translates into a margin of 47,000 votes, an enormous responsibility had been placed on the PL’s shoulders.

The PL, he said had seen an increase of 15 councillors, increased control of five more local councils to reach 47 out of 68.

“Practically 70 per cent of our local councils and even more when translated into territory are now under a Labour majority.”

This, Dr Muscat said, meant that Labour had a huge debt to repay to the public who trusted in them.

The PL would be setting up internal structures to coordinate local council programmes.

“From tomorrow we need to start working because people expect us to deliver,” he said.