This week’s House Business Committee news that parliamentary committee sittings are soon to be broadcast on the Internet, and the possibility of full House sittings to follow, is very welcome news.

The initiative, which we have argued in favour of for some time now, promises to go a long way towards bringing the people closer to the running of the country and the formulation of its laws. It could also very well serve to provide a better element of accountability when it comes to attendance records in Parliament, which have been the subject of heated debate recently.

Parliament has gone for a staggered implementation, which is only correct. The reception with which the initiative is greeted by the public and Members of Parliament themselves will need to be properly gauged.

Live video streaming will first be introduced for meetings of the European and Foreign Affairs Committee for a month, after which it will be extended to other committees and eventually to sittings of the entire House.

As matters currently stand, House sittings can only be followed on the radio, or from within Parliament itself from the Strangers’ Gallery. While there is very seldom a rush for seats in the Strangers’ Gallery, a recent Broadcasting Authority survey found that a mere 0.1 per cent of the population, some 400 people, tune in to the parliamentary debates broadcast on state radio.

Making the proceedings of Parliament as widely available as possible represents, in a way, the very essence of democracy and democratic representation. Now whether the people will tune in is quite another story. They should.

With just over 400 people following the nightly parliamentary debates, one questions where the other thousands of people debating politics on a daily basis at work and at home, in bars and on buses, get their information from.

Television news rarely reports parliamentary proceedings and usually only does so in the cases of major debates. Two of the country’s four daily newspapers deliver slanted reports of parliamentary sittings, as no daily paper can afford to report an entire parliamentary sitting and instead, many times, gives blanket reportage to subjects that are intricate, multifaceted and complicated − the facets of which would certainly prove very interesting to different segments of the population on different nights.

Parliamentary debates appear at times unnecessarily prolonged and seem to go nowhere very slowly. At others they are lively, spirited and impassioned. The entertainment factor is, however, irrelevant in this context. The point is to render the process of the country’s lawmaking as transparent and accessible as possible, to as many people as possible.

With the eventuality of live Parliament, viewers would be able to far more easily put voices to faces and faces to names – in the process making parliamentarians more accountable for their actions in Parliament, also when it comes to election time. Viewers would be able to see the facial expressions of speakers as they deliver their arguments and speeches, adding a whole new dimension to the observation of politics.

Perhaps even more important is the effect the introduction of televised parliamentary sittings would have on parliamentarians themselves, although, it has been noted, there is the danger of parliamentarians resorting to ‘playing to the camera’. But we feel that most MPs will resist that particular temptation.

Putting the attendance issue to the side, with the advent of live Parliament on the Internet, Malta’s elected would be instantly more accountable for their actions and arguments – firstly because they would know that there would be more people following a broadcast debate, given today’s high broadband internet penetration rates and the use of laptops and tablet computers.

They could also very well be spurred to produce better argumentation and more constructive reasoning when they know they are being broadcast live, as opposed to the currently less intrusive audio transmissions – all to the benefit of the country at the end of the day.

Moreover, rendering Parliament more widely available also bestows it with more of the importance that it deserves. As matters stand, the public does not pay enough heed to the way in which the country is being run and its laws formulated.

Perhaps by reaching out to the public in this way, Parliament will bring the people closer to it, and vice versa. That, after all, is the very essence of democracy.