A pattern has been set! He who makes the rules makes them to keep himself in power. Is democracy to mean: “we must rule while the others obey”? If this is the way that local elections are to be modelled in times to come, we are playing with fire. There is more than one way to infringe democracy.

The Nationalist administration today still cries wolf to the antics of the 1970s and 1980s, that “Freedom and democracy was under threat” – simply because they refused to understand that new reforms and discipline were needed to build a nation… but that’s another story – controversial maybe – but it made us a proud nation.

What the Nationalist administration is putting in practice today is a much bigger threat to democracy. The “right to vote” is crucial and to take it away is abysmal.

Towns and villages have a moral “right” to elect candidates of their own choice. This fundamental right is being taken away by an administration in tatters. It is a farce… no, a tragi-comedy. What Lawrence Gonzi is practising today is unacceptable – a threat!

The main question now is, how will one ever know whether the citizens of Zejtun and Marsa are not, for the next three years, being lumbered with councillors and a mayor not of their own choice? This doubt will haunt all voters, no matter what colour.

As a former councillor and maybe a future candidate, if a similar situation was to be imposed on the village that I am to represent, I would be more than embarrassed and uncomfortable to face the locals, more so to impose on them the “will” of a council that was not democratically elected.

If, in today’s politics, percentages are to reign above the “right to vote”, then we could be witnessing the demise of local councils. This PN manoeuvre has set a precarious pattern… for all parties can play the same game.

Lawrence Schembri

GUDJA