Malta's Top Civil Servant Photographed at Labour Victory Rally

The photographs are unambiguous. Social media posts by Glen Sultana show his father, Principal Permanent Secretary Tony Sultana, celebrating Labour's fourth consecutive electoral victory in Valletta alongside his wife, two sons, and other family members. Tony Sultana is Malta's Head of the Public Service, appointed in 2022 by Prime Minister Robert Abela.

The role carries a firm conventional expectation of political impartiality — both visible and actual. His pre-appointment record was itself partisan in character: he sat on the Electoral Commission as Labour's designated representative and occupied senior positions within government during Labour-led administrations. Anonymous senior public service sources described his appearance at the celebrations as "grossly unbecoming" of an official whose function is to stand apart from party politics.

The criticism is directed not at his private sympathies but at the public record the photographs create: Malta's most senior civil servant visibly marking a partisan electoral outcome. Sultana also chairs MITA, the Malta Information Technology Agency, which manages government digital infrastructure and public data systems. Holding both roles simultaneously means the same official sets standards for the civil service and controls the state's digital systems — a concentration that has drawn its own institutional scrutiny.

Unnamed Labour sources alleged a further concern through a family connection to political data work. Glen Sultana's company, 110 Analytics, handles political polling and data analytics for Labour's electoral campaigns. Those sources described Tony Sultana as the driving force behind 110 Analytics and said he remains directly involved in Labour's internal polling.

Both claims are attributed solely to unnamed sources and have not been independently verified. Concerns have also been raised about whether MITA's management of state digital infrastructure might overlap with Labour's campaign data operations through the Sultana family's connection to 110 Analytics. Critics have raised two further allegations about Sultana's conduct in the role.

The first is that state funds were directed toward social media advertising with a partisan character, presented outwardly as civil service campaigns. The second is that official directives restricting the distribution of public sector jobs, promotions, and administrative favours during the campaign period were disregarded, with such distributions said to have continued regardless. All three parties — Sultana, MITA, and the Labour Party — had not provided responses at the time of publication.