The country’s pre-electoral period of silence, in today’s day and age, is about as useful as a chocolate teapot. More than that, the archaic regulation is counterproductive to both the tenets of media pluralism as well as to the interests of a proper democratically informed debate in the referendum campaign’s final hours.

Before delving into the gaping imbalance between the regulated, traditional media and the largely unregulated, new digital media created by the antiquated legislation, there is one serious, fundamental problem envisaged over the course of tomorrow and Saturday.

The divorce referendum campaign has been quite unlike anything the country has ever seen. It has not been a question of one political party or another, it has been about values and conscience. Within this raging debate we have had two official lobbies and a number of splinter groups. But certainly no one can deny that the Church is a major stakeholder in the issue. And no one can deny that the behaviour of certain renegade priests has been inappropriate and has verged on being, if not completely, illegal in terms of the Electoral Polling Ordinance.

The question here is whether Masses heard over Friday and Saturday will touch upon the divorce issue, (directly or indirectly). If so, who will regulate what is being said and who will take action if the law is broken?

In terms of the media, the period of silence imposed on the media and all parties to an election as regards all matters political or electoral on the day before and the day of a public poll is a throwback to the times when people would have to wait for the next morning’s newspapers to get the previous day’s news. In today’s age of instantaneous information, that is no longer the case and it is high time that the country’s policy toward the period of silence is given either an overhaul or is wiped from the statute books and sent into the annals of history where it belongs.

In the year 2011, we have a new world order when it comes to the dissemination of information. We have Facebook and Twitter, message boards and instant chat programs, and their numerous counterparts. According to statistics, the Maltese are among the world’s most passionate Facebook users and the country’s thirst for news, gossip and parody about all matters political and contemporary appears to be insatiable.

And then we have the blogs of all political and societal stripes. Some are reputable, some less so and some are downright offensive. In this new media we have the conservatives, the anarchists, the fundamentalists and the liberals – a mishmash of Maltese society and its views, radical or otherwise.

Then we also have the plethora of news and information websites, some run by established media houses with corresponding print or broadcast editions, and some that are stand alone operations.

All these social networking websites, blogs, and news websites are no longer the exclusive domain of those who have computers and internet access at home, which the vast majority of the Maltese population now has.

The huge uptake of smartphones in Malta, as everywhere else in the world, has also meant that the whole of the internet is available to large sections of the Maltese population from the beach, from work, from a bus stop…from basically anywhere.

This is all well and good and shows that the Maltese as a people are riding the social networking technological wave that has swept across the world. It is a pity that the country’s electoral laws with respect to the period of silence is still hibernating somewhere at the turn of the 20th, not the 21st, century. But in addition to being absurd and redundant, the period of silence, considering today’s changed technological circumstances, also verges on being undemocratic. Why should it be that referendum coverage is banned for the media organisations that fall squarely under the Broadcasting or Press Acts while blogs and social networking sites will be working overtime propagating their own messages?

As during the period of silence in the last general election, these websites will see a surge in visits come tomorrow and Saturday…and the only news about the referendum people will have access to will be from those websites.

When one looks at what social networking, blogs and other modern means of communication did for the Arab Spring, could one really believe that these new means of communication would not have some sort of an effect on the electorate during this period of silence? It is high time the regulated media were put on an equal footing.