The University General Election Debate with the leaders of the five political parties running for this year’s snap election went down this afternoon. Running just over two hours, a Facebook Live Screening of the debate gathered nearly 120,000 views in total, with an average viewership of around 15K people at any given time.

The debate is always a point of controversy, with previous editions having both major political parties accusing each other of manipulating the attendance in their favour. This year, the debate was postponed by a day after Prime Minister Joseph Muscat announced he would not be able to attend due to a commitment with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko .

All throughout the debate and immediately after, dozens of people took to Facebook to give their own two cents on the whole thing. And if there was one thing that kept being brought up, it was the leaders’ tendency to stray well away from issues concerning students (like for example the first question on education) and instead deviate towards the current hot topic of corruption.

Others went after not only the leaders and their replies, but also some of the questions which were asked by the students, and the possible motives behind them. As people also pointed out, some comments from the public throughout the stream were very disconcerting.

But one thing’s for sure; the debate impressed people in the way it was professionally organised and moderated, and many more should definitely follow in an election campaign.

What did you make of today’s debate? Let us know in the comments.

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David Grech Urpani

Lovin Malta's Head of Content, Dave has been in journalism for the better half of the last decade. Prefers Instagram, but has been known to doomscroll on TikTok. Loves chicken, women's clothes and Kanye West (most of the time).