Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1491702
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 FEBRUARY 2023 OPINION 11 parties themselves, that (to con- tinue the supermarket analogy) need to change their stock of 'products', in order to somehow entice those former 'customers' back to the fold… Oh, no: it is the 60,000 disgrun- tled voters, who should be 'made to see the error of their ways'… by being legally coerced into supporting the same two parties they had earlier chosen to reject: even though the parties them- selves wouldn't have changed at all, in any detail, since the last election. In other words: those same 60,000 voters would be expected to participate in general elec- tions… not out of any 'responsi- bility, duty, or democratic prin- ciple'; and even less, on the basis of any meaningful change, that one or the other party might ac- tually bring about in their own lives (which, after all, is the RE- AL reason why most people vote in elections, anyway). No, those people would be ex- pected to 'go out and vote, like the dutiful citizens they're all supposed to be'… because it is in the two parties' own, self-serv- ing interests for them to do so – even 'under duress', if necessary – and for no other reason, under the sun. And, well, do I even need to continue? Sorry, but that is PRECISELY why so many Mal- tese voters chose not to actually vote in March 2022, in the first place. At the risk of generalising: it is in large degree because they do not actually recognise any discernible difference between the Nationalist and Labour par- ties, when it comes down to certain fundamentals areas of governance that directly affect their own lives. (And no: as it happens, they are clearly not en- thused by any of the smaller par- ties, either). Obviously, I can't pinpoint too many specific factors, behind what amounts to a significant 'loss of public trust in the entire system' (if nothing else, because the reasons will vary from indi- vidual to individual)… … but even a cursory glance at the issues that routinely dom- inate this newspaper's surveys about 'popular concerns' – traf- fic management; the environ- ment; inflation; immigration; rising crime-rates; over-devel- opment; the loss (or excessive commercialisation) of public open spaces; etc., etc. – should already be enough to point in a certain direction. Simply put: a growing num- ber of (mostly young) people are now gravitating towards the same general conclusion: i.e., that unless the two par- ties themselves make radical changes, to the sort of political 'product' they themselves are offering the electorate… there is no conceivable reason to even bother voting in Maltese elec- tions, at all. And surely, that should place the 'onus of change' directly onto the two political parties– which (in theory, anyway) now have to compete, for the grow- ing contingent of former voters who are quite frankly unim- pressed by what either of them has to offer. Effectively, this also means that – far from 'political parties becoming more comfortable simply pleasing their fanatics' – a further drop in voter-par- ticipation is arguably the only thing that can even happen, in this country, to finally convince those two parties of the need to actually 'transform themselves', into something more 'deserving of the electorate's trust'. What Evarist Bartolo (among others) seems to be suggesting, on the other hand, is the clean opposite of all that. Not only would 'mandatory voting' cre- ate no impetus whatsoever, for the two parties to even angle for any of those 60,000 lost voters, at all – and still less, to change any of their own policies, to ac- commodate them – but the on- ly conceivable impact this leg- islation is ever likely to have, in practice, is that… Well, let me put it this way. The percentage of 'votes cast' would almost certainly shoot right back up, from the 88% of 2022, to the (entirely unhealthy, if you ask me) '96/97%' levels it used to be, way back in the 1980s. But the same shortfall would be immediately counter-bal- anced, by an equal-and-oppo- site skyrocketing of the per- centage of 'invalidated votes'. Because let's face it, folks: if no fewer than 60,000 Maltese vot- ers decided, at the last election, to send out a clear and unequiv- ocal message to both parties – i.e. that 'they want CHANGE: and they want it NOW!' – and the parties' actual response, is to virtually threaten those same voters with criminal sanctions, if they don't immediately com- ply with their own demands for "political allegiance at all costs: no questions asked…" Quite frankly, I shudder to even imagine the sort of ob- scenities that will be scrawled all over those ballot sheets, in the privacy of the voting-cubi- cle, come election day itself. Even if the number of people who choose to invalidate their votes is likely to be a whole lot higher than just '60,000' (given that I myself will certainly be among them. In fact, I'd con- sider it both a 'responsibility', as well a 'civic duty', to scrawl a few obscenities of my own, on that ballot sheet – ON PRINCI- PLE, please note – if I am ever compelled to vote in any elec- tion, against my own will… and under threat of 'criminal sanc- tions', no less.) Just saying, that's all… I can more or less understand how politicians like Evarist Bartolo – who, let's face it, depend exclusively on 'voter-participation in elections', for their own political advancement – would be disconcerted, by what can only be described as an unprecedented (by local standards) decline in voter turn-out