That Labour should have won the last general election hands down, given the dire straits this country had been in and still is, remains a fact admitted even by diehard Nationalists who honestly believe in playing fair. That the Gonzi government ended up failing to obtain an absolute majority of votes but still winning by a thousand-vote whisker is testament to such belief.

Today, it is acknowledged by most well-meaning citizens of both the Right and the Left – as well as that important minority at the ill-defined centre of Maltese politics – that what did it for the party in government was the habitual influx, from across the water, of the blue brigade of expatriate Maltese. These people live overseas, particularly in Europe, and quickly grab the cheap, don’t-mind-if-we-don’t-make-a-profit Air Malta ticket on offer and take time off from their politically-sponsored, safe jobs on the Continent to take part in a confidence trick that so obviously works when the other party has, for some reason or other, not garnered enough support to activate to the desired degree an electoral swing.

Stories abound of people of another political inclination desperately trying to book their flights to Malta at election time, but finding only resistance from those in control of the whole exercise. I personally know friends and acquaintances who were actually told the aircraft was full so there was no chance of them getting a ticket, but who – at their strong insistence – were finally given one, only to find, when they boarded the plane to the island, that it was half full. These were cases of people who had every legal right to vote, by the way.

The problem is, of course, that with the elimination of the compulsory filling of embarkation cards the authorities were left with no possible means of verifying that people who come from overseas to vote actually do so. Not that anyone of those same authorities lost a single minute of a good night’s sleep over this massive elastic loophole in the electoral system.

We have also had government ministers actually admitting in Parliament that the loophole exists but, according to them, they cannot do anything about it. After all, they argued vehemently, the loophole could also have worked for the Opposition in the sense that Labour-inclined people who voted could still not be verified that they had legally done so. So much for democracy.

What the government spokesmen failed to admit as a fallacy is that the whole system is controlled and operated by Air Malta when it is the Electoral Commission that should be in the driving seat. Even worse, the chairman of Air Malta happens to be on the governing party’s strategic group so, I dare say, very strategically positioned too.

I will not, however, doubt the man’s integrity but simply equate the situation with a French pochade in which the audience is well aware of the on-stage and backstage antics, laughs out loudly, sometimes even sadly, at them but knows it cannot do anything about the whole farce. How can a country that is historically known to produce governments and changes of government at the turn of a mere few hundred votes allow a system which is created around a loophole, intended or not?

This reality has understandably provoked the other parties into action. The Labour Opposition has rightly insisted such loopholes in the Electoral Law are “unacceptable”, though the government’s response thus far has been yet another huge measure of arrogance. Its refusal, for example, of the suggestion to have identity cards central to the voting process smacks of a complete disregard of democratic practices and a glaring disinclination to create a genuine level playfield.

I wonder what these bombastically-named American institutions that so often, albeit banally, seek to analyse and label countries in the rest of the world with regard to the acquisition or retention of the democratic status and respect to sundry freedoms, have to say about all this.

Joseph Muscat’s insistence on a system that ensures that “only those who deserve to vote are able to vote” at any election that takes place on these islands seems to make sense to everyone, except those who have found, much to their delight, that loopholes can be lovable enough as they prolong their tenure in power.

It has now become obvious to most people that we have a government that ostensibly believes in the adage “you can’t fool all the people all the time”, but still figures that once every five years is good enough.

Malta happily has a lack of those guys who never vote but are the first to tell you what’s wrong with the country, but we have now seen a steady increase in the number of people who do not live here on a regular basis, do not pay any of the exceedingly high taxes we all do and are still allowed, some say enticed, to come over on a cheap weekend errand to vote for the party that has made it impossible for anyone to confirm they have the right to do so, let alone stop them.

Just as I would be against any suggestion that Maltese communities in places like Canada and Australia should be given the right to vote in our national elections, I am aghast that we should be letting all these weekenders to drop in with a vote and possibly, as happened in March 2008, influence the proceedings by shifting the trend towards one party and not the other. It is why the payment of taxes should also be the basis on which the Electoral Commission agrees or not to each and every voter’s right to vote.

When quizzed about the issue, a government minister recently went even as far as to ludicrously say that the “huge” number of voters involved made it impossible for the authorities to ensure that every vote is a legal one. Thank goodness we do not live in a sub-continental democracy like India but on a minuscule island. Need one say more?