After this latest round of local council election ugliness, perhaps it is about time that the country’s political parties take a step back from local politics. Their involvement is, more often than not, counterproductive to the smooth, efficient and what should be a forward-looking way of running the country’s localities.

That is because the constantly ongoing tit-for-tat between the two main political parties on a national level is not only nauseating and counterproductive to the running of the country itself, but it also leeches down to local council level.

The country’s local council system is approaching it 20 year mark and the inherent concept of bringing certain areas of the running of the country closer to the people, and vice versa, is extremely positive, but the politically polarised environment in which most local councils are run does not help achieve that goal. In fact, it very well tears people apart more often than not.

Malta’s near two-decade local council experience has been at times been colourful and at others painful. A quick glance at the antics revealed at the Sliema local council and the recordings that have been leaked from presumably private conversations have placed both parties in a poor light for obviously different reasons.

But despite the drawbacks of political interference, it is undeniable that Malta’s localities have benefited in several ways from the establishment of the local council system.

They could, however, benefit a great deal more. As in general elections, the electorate does not generally vote on the issues but instead simply along party lines. Wouldn’t it be so much better if, at least on a local level, people would vote in the best interests of their own localities and not for the good of the political party they represent?

While removing the great political duopoly from local council elections is still undoubtedly a long way off, if indeed that could ever happen, the least that the political parties could do would be to take a healthy step back from the arena.

Day of silence no longer silent… or needed

We recently heard a lot of good words said about the maturity of the Maltese people when the government relaxed the stringent rules on stage and film classifications and when the issue of political satire in carnival, which turned out to be a non-issue after all, cropped up recently.

At the risk of sounding patronising, we have to agree that the Maltese people are indeed mature enough to handle the advent of both. But what would well and truly invest the people with the mature status that they have earned from our politicians would be to do away with what has now become a ridiculous pre-electoral day of silence.

The country’s period of silence, in today’s day and age, is about as useful as an ejection seat in a helicopter. More than that, the archaic regulation is counterproductive to both the tenets of media pluralism as well as the interests of a proper democratically informed debate in final hours of an electoral contest.

Yesterday, it was reported that NET TV had been reprimanded by the Broadcasting Authority for showing the Prime Minister meeting local council candidates, and One TV was also chastised for broadcasting comments made by the Opposition leader after casting his vote in the morning.

While the law is what it is, and the BA is obliged to enforce it, one really has to question just how many people were unduly influenced by those broadcasts.

In today’s age of instantaneous information, it is high time that the country’s policy on the period of silence is either given an overhaul or is wiped from the statute books and sent into the annals of history where it belongs.

In the year 2012, we have Facebook and Twitter, message boards and instant chat programs, and their numerous counterparts. According to statistics, the Maltese are among the world’s most passionate Facebook users and the country’s thirst for news, gossip and parody about all matters political and contemporary appears to be insatiable.

We have the blogs of all political and societal stripes. Some are reputable, some less so and some are downright offensive. In this new media we have the conservatives, the anarchists, the fundamentalists and the liberals – a mishmash of Maltese society and its views, radical or otherwise.

Their commentaries are available to all and sundry, day of silence or not, but the problem is that on the day before and on the day of an electoral contest, responsible, ethical news organisations are forced to go completely silent and the normal balance they provide to all the other information out there is switched off.

There is something wrong with this formula and it needs to be addressed, preferably before the next time Malta takes to the polls.