Costa de la Luz
Gibraltar awaits election result for new Chief Minister
By m.p.
Oct 11, 2007 - 10:07 PM

More than half the electorate had turned out to the polls by 6 o’clock on Thursday in voting on Gibraltar to elect a new Chief Minister. The polls closed at 10pm, with the first results expected to come in early on Friday morning.
A recent opinion poll put the current Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, and his opponent, Joe Bossano, neck and neck.

Caruana is just coming up to his 51st birthday, and has been Chief Minister of Gibraltar since 1996, when the Gibraltar Social Democrats first came to power, when GSD defeated Joe Bossano’s party, the Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party, who had been in power since 1988.

Bossano is now standing as a joint GSLP/Liberal candidate, and says he may bring in a referendum on the future of the Rock if he is returned to power on what is known as the Córdoba deal. It agreed joint use of Gibraltar Airport – together with a new terminal - improvements at border controls and on telecommunications, and pension payments for Spaniards who worked on the Rock before 1969. The first commercial flight from Spain landed at Gibraltar Airport last December.

What the deal did not address was the question of sovereignty of Gibraltar.