Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1521306
should become more re- stricted • The legalisation of same sex marriages is a good thing • The EU should rig- orously punish member states that violate the EU deficit rules • Individual member states of the EU should have less veto power • The EU should sanc- tion member states whose governments undermine the rule of law… … and many more, for a total of 30 questions at a pop. Sadly, I don't have either the time or space, right now, to go into any detail on how ALL those different attempts panned out, in relation to each other… so instead, I'll limit myself to just one, for now. Norman Lowell… or, to be more precise, 'how the typical Norman Lowell voter imagines their preferred candidate to be' [Note: I make this distinction because – having interviewed the man on more than one occasion - I can confirm that there are sometimes discrep- ancies, between perception and reality. Most of Lowell's voters may be attracted to his racist, right-wing rhetoric… but how many of them know that he is also (unlike any other European far-right exponent I can think of) a firm believer in 'further European integration'? Or deeply anticlerical, for that matter: which places him in opposite camps, from other 'far-right' parties such as AB- BA?] But in any case: having duly filled out that questionnaire, in the way an extreme far-right voter would be expected to an- swer (and you can get a rough idea, just by re-reading the above samples)… I hit the 'Just give the results' button, and… … well, a number of remark- able things happened, all at once. The first of these, I suppose, can only be described as a 'magic trick'. Despite having given the most xenophobic, an- ti-immigration answers imagi- nable – basically, 'completely agreeing' with everything that could be translated as: 'GOW BEK TO YOR KONTRI!' – the recommendation I actually I got was: 50% PN; 49% PL; and (even more bizarrely, if you ask me) 37% ADPD. As for Norman Lowell's own Imperium Europa, however – along with all the other 'far right-wing' parties/candidates, of varying shades and degrees, in this election: nothing. No mention whatsoever… OK: once again, this tells us infinitely more about the de- veloper's claims of 'political neutrality', than about the actual Maltese political land- scape in 2024; but never mind that for now, because… like I said a little earlier. This app has infinitely more uses, than its creators evidently intended. And one other way to inter- pret the above result is… well, what it really IS, to be honest. A snapshot of what the Mal- tese political landscape would look like, if far right parties like Imperium Europa (and others) were to be magically removed from it, altogether. 50% PN, 49% Labour, and 37% AD. Percentages that, on one hand, correspond to 'how much of their political man- ifestos overlap, with those of the radical, racist Right'… … but on the other, they also illustrate, at a glance, just how far removed from one anoth- er Malta's mainstream parties really are, in terms of 'extreme right-wing policies'. As is to be expected, there is a significant distance between ADPD/the Green Party, and both Labour and PN… but be- tween the latter two? The dif- ference works out at exactly 1% (which, given the margin of error, effectively means 'no dif- ference at all'). But wait, it gets better! Re- member that I also conducted the same experiment, imper- sonating Far Left voters; Cen- trist voters; Green voters; Red voters; Blue voters; etc. etc.? Well, the results might not always have been comparable, in terms of raw statistics (on Green issues, for instance, the parties came in as '88% ADPD; 62% PN; 61% Labour…) but al- ready, I imagine, you can see a certain pattern developing here. Regardless which political ideology you choose, for your fictitious questionnaire-filler… the results will be almost ex- actly identical, in at least one respect. There will NEVER be a mar- gin greater than 2% (in nearly all cases, it was always the same old 1%) separating the Nation- alist and Labour Parties, when it comes to ALL the issues that actually MATTER to voters, in any given election. Once again, I've left myself with too little space to elaborate on the implications of all that… but just to give you a rough idea: with so little actually di- viding the two main parties, in terms of policy… can anyone be surprised when ever-larg- er swathes of voters gravitate away from mainstream poli- tics (where their concerns are simply not reflected, at all), to smaller 'fringe' parties/candi- dates (who DO, for better or worse, address those same con- cerns)? But like I said at the very be- ginning: this is an experiment you can try for yourselves, at home. And I think you'll find that it explains… Oh! So very much, about how utterly dys- functional our political system has now become. 11 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 MAY 2024 OPINION