PN MP Ivan Bartolo has announced he will be giving up his parliamentary seat on Monday to make way for new Nationalist leader Bernard Grech.

“My seat in parliament was entrusted to me by the constituents of the ninth district. This is a privilege I would never take for granted. I will never forget that this seat belongs to the people and they simply entrusted me to represent their hopes, their desires, their aspirations and their needs in Parliament,” Bartolo said in a statement today.

His decision comes after Grech was chosen as the new party leader with 69% of paid-up party member’s votes in an election yesterday. He will now be taking over from his predecessor Adrian Delia.

Bartolo pledged to be more active and committed than ever to his. constituents,

“This will give the Nationalist Party the right to start gaining the lost trust and to regain the confidence that in fact it can be an alternative government,” he said.