The 12 March local council election will once again be a big test for all the parties which will be participating.

One will have to see whether the trend which emerged in last year’s two elections – the one to elect Malta’s five representatives in the European Parliament and the yearly local council election – will be maintained or whether there will be a shift.

At this stage, it is pertinent to question whether Malta should undergo this exercise on a yearly basis.

In a highly-polarised country such as ours, having an election every year may not be such a good idea. This is because the country seems to stop, or at least stall, every time we go to the polls. It is not really healthy to have to go through all this every year since, in the end, we all suffer the consequences.

Of course, local council elections cannot be compared to a general election in terms of importance. Yet, the way we function and the way politics dominate this country of ours give local elections a much bigger significance than they perhaps have elsewhere.

It would have been a great step forward to reduce the political content in our everyday lives had the Nationalist Party and the Malta Labour Party found common ground on extending the term of office of local councils by a year or two.

This would have served many purposes. The first is that money would have been saved because there would be fewer elections to hold. The second benefit would have been that Malta would not have to be in election mode every 12 months. The third reason is that local councils would have been able to work better over a four or five-year period, rather than a three-year term as they do now.

The agreement was within reach but, unfortunately, as seems to be the case on the most important issues in this country, it collapsed in the final stages. It would have been ideal to set the ball rolling now.

Still, other amendments to the Local Councils Act were in fact agreed upon and some of them will come into force as from next month’s election. This includes the direct election of the mayor by the people.

This new scenario means that the people now have the power to elect or depose a mayor. It is now up to the

residents to see who really worked for their locality or who, on the other hand, did not deliver the goods. Mayors who have shown incompetence, superficiality and irresponsibility should not be given the number one vote.

To go back to the original argument – whether Malta should have an election every year – it must be pointed out that there are a number of positive aspects.

The fact that parties put themselves to the test each and every year helps them to gauge their popularity or

otherwise.

It is also a chance for the population to show its concern with regards to the manner in which matters are being administered, as indeed happened last year when a huge chunk of Nationalists cast their vote in favour of Alternattiva Demokratika. This resulted in a defeat for the PN, which picked up only two of the five seats available in the European Parliament. It also meant a loss in the local council election too.

The trick in all this is that the parties should take heed of what the people say through their vote in local council elections.

If they do badly, they should see what is wrong and try to rectify matters, hopefully (for them) in time for the general election. If they do well, then they should try to consolidate their position and build on their partial

success.

Parties will have a problem if they do not take such straightforward hints.