Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1521306
RIGHT, folks: this is an exper- iment you can all try out for yourselves at home. And I urge you all to do so, too: because the results will not only be enormously help- ful, when it comes to plotting where you yourself stand on the political/ideological spec- trum; but they also might help explain why so much of Malta's political landscape just doesn't seem to make very much sense at all, regardless from which perspective it is looked at. It's also easy, fast, and – to the best of my knowledge, anyway – completely free-of-charge. [Note: I mean that in the fi- nancial sense only. There may, for all I know, be a small cost in the form of 'cookies clogging up your PC's hard drive'; 'being targeted by AI-driven spyware'; you know, that sort of thing.] In any case: all you have to do is visit a website called 'EU and I' (www.euandi.eu), which will take you to "a Voting Ad- vice Application (VAA) aimed at helping citizens make an in- formed choice in the 2024 Eu- ropean Parliament (EP) elec- tions". Like the more famous 'Polit- ical Compass' test, on which it is very clearly modelled: users are invited to "react to poli- cy statements covering a wide range of contemporary policy issues and political values in European politics"; with a view to "[providing] voters with a broad view of the European political landscape and their individual positions within it." If that were the full extent of this app's functions, it would already be enough for me to shamelessly plug its usage, like I'm doing right now. Just the other day, for in- stance, I overheard a conver- sation in which someone first rapid-fired an entire litany of (often outrageously) right- wing 'declarations-of-belief'… only to conclude: "that's why I'm voting for the Labour Party candidates, in this election." Now: I am well aware, of course, that this tells us a lot more about the Labour Party's supposedly 'left-wing' creden- tials, than about that voter's own political ideology (more of this later)… but even with that factored in, the contradiction remains too enormous to ig- nore. In other words: given that, a) 99% of the aforementioned right-wing beliefs were all cen- tred on 'immigration'; and b) the Labour Government's of- ficial policy is – and has been, since 2013 - to 'grow the popu- lation', by means of none other than the same 'immigration' is- sue, that irks right-wing voters so much… … you'd sort of expect the Labour Party to be at the very BOTTOM of those voters' pri- ority list right now, wouldn't you? But that brings us neatly to a second, far more useful func- tion that this particular appli- cation provides (even if I sus- pect it is entirely unintentional, on the developers' part). Unlike most other compara- ble apps, there appears to be no limit to how often you can fill out the same questionnaire (I need hardly add, giving wild- ly different answers, each and every single time). In fact, this design-flaw leaves the app so hopelessly vulner- able to abuse, that I feel com- pelled to add the following, ul- tra-important disclaimer: Every time you fill out the form, you will be given a final choice between 'Submit your answers' (in which case, they will be fed into the algorithm's database, for further research purposes); or 'Just give me the results' (whereby your submis- sion will have no effect whatso- ever, on the mountain of online misinformation that already exists out there). For the purposes of this ex- periment, then: be sure to AL- WAYS hit the 'Just give me the results' button, when using this app with the equivalent of a 'fake profile'… And with that out of the way: onto the experiment itself, a last! This morning, I had a lot of fun filling out that question- naire - over and over again – giving the answers I imagine would come from all the vari- ous Maltese politicians (and/or special interest groups) cam- paigning in this election. I started with Prime Minister Robert Abela; then proceeded with Opposition Leader Ber- nard Grech; ADPD chairper- son Sandra Gauci; independent candidate Arnold Cassola; Im- perium Europa's Norman Low- ell… and, well, that was about it, really (for the life of me, I wouldn't know where to even begin, when it comes to 'mav- erick candidates' like Adrian Zammit, or James Ryder). For each of those individuals, I tried to guess which of the following boxes they (or their supporters) would tick, be- tween: • 'Completely agree/dis- agree'; • 'Tend to agree/disagree'; • 'Neutral' • 'No opinion' [Even if, looking back, I don't think I ever ticked this one, for any of them] … in answer to statements like: • Immigrants from out- side Europe should be re- quired to accept our cul- ture and values • Immigration into Mal- ta should be made more restrictive • Asylum-seekers should be distributed propor- tionally among EU mem- ber states through a man- datory relocation system • Access to abortion maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 MAY 2024 10 OPINION Everything that's wrong with Maltese politics, in one online app… Raphael Vassallo