Six months separate the holding of the next round of local council elections. It has been quite a while since people were asked to vote to elect their representatives in the locality, as changes to the law eliminated the need to have local council elections every year. The idea was to cut down on political animosity, and at the same time extend the local council’s term of office to give them more time to work.

Political parties are already working hard to find candidates to contest on their behalf. Many councillors will re-contest, but parties are always on the look-out for new and fresh ideas to propose, and these take the form of new faces.

Local councils are closing in on their 20th anniversary, and it must be said that, generally speaking, they have had a positive impact on our way of life. Of course, there are councils that have worked more than others, and have been quite popular with their residents, irrespective of which party had the majority. Others, however, failed miserably, and parties will be looking at these failures to understand what could go wrong and be more careful in their selection of candidates.

The real pity however is that, too often, local councils unfortunately have become the extended arm of government bureaucracy. Instead of phoning the minister, or someone you know at the ministry, to have the pavement in front of your home fixed, you phone up the local council. And, as happened in the past when the minister or ministry was called, it takes such a long time for the complaint to be seen to.

The next local council election is also probably the last time that the people’s mood will be gauged before the general election, scheduled to take place some time in 2013. It will therefore be a great opportunity for the political parties to come to grips with what the people are thinking before they embark on the national election campaign.

Local council elections are however not indicative of the people’s political mood. It has happened, for example, that the Labour Party was successful in successive local council elections in the last legislative term, but then ended up losing the national election of 2008. This is largely because local council elections have lower turn-outs and attract the protest voters, those who want to send messages to their party but who would never vote against it in the general election.

However, the 2012 local council polls will serve to get the parties to oil their propaganda machine as they prepare themselves for the bigger prize.