MALTA'S Labour Party leader, Mr Alfred Sant, claimed victory yesterday after this weekend's general elections on the Mediterranean island.
"The available information is that we have won," Mr Sant said, even as ballot-counting was continuing and no results had yet been released.
The general elections in Malta brought a record turnout with 97.16 per cent of the 274,925 registered voters taking part in Saturday's poll, the electoral committee announced.
The electoral turnout is traditionally high on the island, but the previous record of 96.11 percent in 1987 was surpassed.
However, owing to the complexity of the Maltese electoral system, no firm results were expected until today.
In the last elections in 1992, the right wing Nationalist Party won for the second consecutive time, with a 13,000 vote lead over its Labour Party rivals.
At stake is the future of Malta's application to join the EU, to be pursued if the Nationalist Party wins and scrapped if the Labour Party achieves victory.
The Prime Minister, Mr Edward Fenech Adami (62), who had a three seat majority in the 65 member parliament, is pledged to pursue the EU membership application he made in 1990.
Mr Sant (48) is committed to end Malta's application and pull the country out of NATO's Partnership for Peace Programme which it joined last year.
Malta has no independent opinion polls and both main parties say their own polls show they will win.
Elections in the 1970s and 1980s were marked by violence which both parties pledged to avoid, the Labour Party forbidding its supporters from putting up banners to avoid strife.
Mr Fenech Adami said Europe is the only way Malta can go, in our own best interests". He sees EU talks completed and Maltu ready for membership by mid 1998.
Labour seeks instead a "special relationship" and what it terms "positive neutrality" as best suited to the island where sovereignty is a sensitive issue. The party fears Malta being turned back to a fortress island.