Abela’s MEP election casualty compensated with three jobs

Aleander Balzan, a former chief policy adviser to Prime Minister Robert Abela who resigned from his role at Castille following Labour’s drubbing at the 2024 MEP elections, is being well compensated for his unplanned exit with three new taxpayer-funded government positions.

The Shift has confirmed that after losing his post as Abela’s adviser in August 2024, Balzan, a former ONE journalist and Labour spokesperson, was quickly back on the government’s gravy train.

In September 2024, just a month after his resignation – prompted by harsh internal criticism over his role in the June 2024 elections – Balzan was awarded a €36,000-a-year contract for services to act as an adviser to Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri.

According to the two-year contract, Balzan was engaged as a communications and PR consultant, tasked with providing strategic advice to the minister. He was to be paid €35 per hour for up to 20 hours per week.

Balzan had already been a person of trust for Minister Camilleri until 2022, when he joined Robert Abela at Castille.

Instead of returning to a full-time role, an arrangement was made for Balzan to earn more than €3,000 a month from the ministry without the need for an office or physical presence there.

In October 2024, a month later, Balzan was also re-integrated into the payroll of the Office of the Prime Minister, this time through the assistance of Parliamentary Secretary Rebecca Buttigieg.

Through another contract, signed in October 2024, Balzan was set to receive an additional €10,000 a year as an adviser on PR and communications for the young parliamentary secretary. Once again, the engagement was structured as a consultancy, meaning Balzan was not required to be physically present at the ministry.

The Parliamentary Secretary, with a very small portfolio, already had a full-time spokesperson, assisted on a part-time basis by Reno Bugeja, the former PBS head of news, also given a position of trust contract.

During the same period, Balzan was also reappointed to the Board of the Malta Freeport Corporation – an authority with an inflated Board, ostensibly tasked with regulating the operations of the Freeport Terminal.

The Board includes other PL insiders, among them a former colleague of Balzan, ex-ONE reporter Claudette Abela Baldacchino.

After resigning from his position at the OPM, Balzan began marketing himself openly to private businesses, offering his services as a strategic communications adviser. It cannot be excluded that other government entities or agencies may also be using his services, paid for with public funds.

During his two-year stint at Castille, Balzan was known to wield significant influence over Prime Minister Robert Abela and was widely regarded as being behind key political decisions that put Abela at loggerheads with his predecessor, disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat.

Following Labour’s poor result in 2024,  in which the party suffered a substantial loss of votes amid growing public discontent, particularly among its rank and file, almost all senior staff at the PL and Castille were replaced, allowing the prime minister to claim he had heeded the voters’ message.

However, all officials who resigned were subsequently appointed to lucrative positions in the public sector.