Mr Alexander Galea

A most unhappy part of the local scene is the placing of party canvassers in strategic positions. The job of these canvassers is meant to be an accurate count of party votes.

Last Saturday as I woke, I looked out of the window to see how the weather was and had a most unpleasant surprise. A keen party activist of certain affiliation was parked within the 50 metre No Parking zone. He parked just underneath my doorstep and stayed there for about four hours, until the police came and told him to park outside the No Parking zone. He did as he was ordered and this time blocked a garage entrance, and spent a total of 11 hours watching the movement of people in our street.

The questions I asked myself were quite a few. One of them was, what right does he have to check on who is voting? Then I queried what right had he, being a non-resident of the road where I live, to park within the 50 metre No Parking zone and remain untouched for four hours? Unlike the privileged canvasser, residents were told not to park within that zone or otherwise they would be towed.

The problem that has to be addressed, is why should anybody invade another person’s privacy to follow a party practice that I find most invasive? How legal or ethical is this political parties’ promoted practice? Sadly, when one talks about ethics it does not really picture our party-practices.

I still cannot understand what the hype of local councils elections is all about. I thought that once the data protection act was set up, and Malta seems to have taken it seriously, this practice of invading people’s privacy would have become obsolete.

Yet as long as our political parties take this infantile approach, and encourage their canvassers to invade other people’s spaces, people like me will have to suffer the consequences of having unwanted people behind my door and no respect for my privacy.

I believe that the political parties have still not realised that there is a section of society that does not go by party but by a far more mature approach to politics, and that elections are not a life-threatening situation – but having certain people parked outside your door could become one.

A.Galea

Dingli