[1] The Labour Party won a second term in government for the first time since 1976, receiving 55% of the vote, the highest share since 1955.

[11] Further to the outbreak of the Panama Papers, where the already mentioned Mizzi and Keith Schembri, the Chief of Staff within the Office of the Prime Minister were included as owners of a Panama company, together with an unnamed owner of a third company, the Maltese government was receiving copious amounts of pressure by civil society, spearheaded by blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia, but also by the Nationalist Party, especially Leader of the Opposition Simon Busuttil.

[14] On 20 April 2017, Caruana Galizia, published a series of articles linking Joseph Muscat, Konrad Mizzi, Brian Tonna (managing partner at Nexia BT, owner of BT International, which is the sole shareholder in the Maltese Mossack Fonseca franchise).

[15] Muscat called a press conference stating that he asked for an inquiry into Caruana Galizia's claims, categorically denying any wrongdoing and labelling the allegations as "the biggest lie in Malta's political history".

[18] Police raided Pilatus Bank on 21 April, however this was deemed as being too late by the PN media since that night a "mysterious" ferry flight operated by VistaJet was en route to Baku, Azerbaijan.

[22][18][23] Michael Briguglio, an Alternattiva Demokratika politician, agreed that the Prime Minister should resign and tweeted that he would be joining the protest.

In addition to these, two Nationalist candidates (Carm Mifsud Bonnici and Frederick Azzopardi) were awarded at-large seats in accordance with the proportional representation system.

[52][53][54] Muscat declared the result to be an endorsement of his government's programme, stating that "It is clear that the people have chosen to stay the course.

[57] Despite this, leading Nationalist Robert Arrigo wrote an open letter to Busuttil imploring him to rescind his resignation.