The airlift is about to begin. Or maybe it already has begun. From all over the world (we choose our words carefully) people are leaving to come to Malta so as to be able to vote on Saturday.

Up till an election or two ago, people who have the right to vote in Malta were the ones to benefit from Air Malta’s notorious Lm10 (€23) ticket to come over, mainly from the UK.

Then, predictably, the cohort got bigger and bigger. Obviously, no party  is ever going to admit what it is doing as it tries to squeeze in every last vote, but from information we have from the two camps it would seem the parties are now sponsoring and paying for tickets for anyone who would want to come to cast their vote.

It is not longer people from the UK. We are hearing of people from across the Atlantic, and even, would you believe it, from the Far East.

We have no means to check this and have to rely on anecdotal reports but if this is the case, then we and our two main parties in particular, have clearly lost our heads.

Can anyone explain how a person who lives on the other side of the world should have the right to express a vote just like people who live here and pay their taxes here?

Given that Air Malta, justly, has declined to issue cheap tickets, what will all this bonanza cost the parties?

The parties in Malta have so far not come to an agreement on postal votes or voting in embassies abroad, as all civilized countries do. Whatever the possible complications, surely to put such a system in place would not cost as much as this free air ticket bonanza.

There is a further complication: Ever since we stopped using the embarkation cards, are we sure, really sure, that the people being brought over to vote have qualified for residence requirements? Maybe some would answer us by saying that each party carefully checks the adherents of the other party, but we are not too sure that each party has the proper databases to do so. Besides, it is not in their remit, that should checked by the administration and the authorities.

So along with dragging out the old and the infirm so that they are able to vote, we now have this huge effort for the very last vote. Isn’t this all so exasperating that it becomes a travesty?

Again, the peculiar situation of our country with two parties in a repeated eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation every five years, where only a few votes can make the difference between loser and winner, leads us time and again to this exasperation – the hunt for the very last vote which can make all the difference. But is this real democracy in action? When such an exasperation also means that the winner gets to take all and the loser gets nothing?

There must be something radically wrong in our democracy for such a situation to exist and persist time and again. Why don’t we just allow people to vote by proxy? It is, in our opinion, money down the drain – money that comes from the donations from the general public and money that comes from cash heavy donors. It does not bode well.