Do we like them?

Do we like Robert Abela?

Our score: 6 out of 10. A strong LGBTQ+ record on the page, set against ethics questions and a thin record I could open in full.

Robert Abela is a lawyer who got the top job in a hurry. He became Prime Minister in January 2020 after Joseph Muscat stepped down, in the middle of the national outrage over the Daphne Caruana Galizia case. That's a heavy inheritance for a bloke who had only been in Parliament since 2017.

He then did what many thought he couldn't: won his own mandate. Labour took a landslide in March 2022, and the party won a record fourth consecutive term in the 30-31 May 2026 election, going by Al Jazeera's report on the preliminary results.

The recent fight is about who he keeps close. After the 2026 win, Abela defended his decision to bring Chris Fearne and Rosianne Cutajar back into Cabinet. I couldn't open that article in full, so I can't tell you chapter and verse on what each side said, but the headline alone shows he is willing to wear the heat for it.

Here's the honest gap. Abela's critics raise other matters, including how Malta has handled migrants at sea and abortion law, and the Opposition has attacked his ethics. Those pages either wouldn't open or came without a date I could see, so I've left them out of the column rather than guess. Treat this card as a decent first read, not the last word.

The good stuff is real and on the record: leading a government that has pushed LGBTQ+ equality into health policy, and doing it in public at a Pride march instead of a press release. That's the kind of thing that matters to this page's readers.

So: would we support him? Mostly yes on the harm test, because his own words and acts on LGBTQ+ rights are good. The good-person test is a close call because of the Cabinet choices and the rule-of-law shadow over Maltese politics, hence a middling-to-good score rather than a gush.