Print media reportage of the recent clash between the Electoral Commission and the Chairman of AD –The Green Party, Prof. Arnold Cassola, who is championing the voting rights of resident non-Maltese EU citizens, appositely coincided with the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech in which he portentously declaimed, “We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote…”

The ongoing national debate regarding the enfranchisement of 16 and 17-year-olds has therefore left a much more immediate, compelling democratic deficit neglected and unaddressed.

It concerns the 11,000 resident non-Maltese EU citizens who, unlike Maltese nationals, are at present denied their lawful right to enrol on the electoral register for the European Parliament elections scheduled to be held in Malta and Gozo next year.

What could their impediment possibly be? Are these taxpayers deemed too mature to be eligible or does it connote a corollary to the ‘A’ printed on their identity cards? Are they considered too alien to qualify?

Oisin Jones-Dillon

XEMXIJA