Darren Carabott
PN candidate · Partit Nazzjonalista
- True 1 33%
- Mostly true 1 33%
- + Context 1 33%
- Mixed opinion 0 0%
- Unproven 0 0%
- Misleading 0 0%
- Unlikely 0 0%
- False 0 0%
Documentary fact, conservative undercount. Eurostat and NSO data: Malta issued over 119,200 first residence permits for employment purposes between 2015 and 2024 alone. Foreign-born residents grew from ~5.5% of population in 2012 to ~25-32% by 2024, an increase of approximately 130,000-150,000 people. Carabott's 110,000+ figure is on the conservative side of the documented inflow.
Confirmed by NSO 2024 census data. Six Maltese localities have foreign-resident majority: Gżira (67% foreign), St Julian's (57%), Sliema (55%), plus Pietà, Msida and St Paul's Bay. Up from just three localities in 2021. Carabott's specific six-locality figure matches the published NSO end-2024 data.
On a strict literal reading the claim is technically defensible — Malta is the only country whose government has called an early election specifically because of the current Iran-Israel war and Strait of Hormuz crisis. But the broader pattern Carabott was implicitly invoking — a sitting government calling early during a looming international crisis — has multiple recent precedents: UK 2017 (Theresa May, Brexit negotiations); Japan 2017 (Shinzo Abe, North Korea threat); Türkiye 2018 (Erdoğan, Syria/regional pressures); Greece 2015 (Tsipras, EU bailout mandate). The technical accuracy holds; the implication of unprecedented behaviour does not.