The world has changed almost unrecognisably since the drafting of the country’s electoral laws, and so has the electoral landscape. 

But somehow our electoral laws are still stuck in the dark ages and the control that the Broadcasting Authority wields over televised pre-electoral political debates presents a fine case in point.

In today’s day and age, the country’s pre-electoral period of silence as well as the heavy hand of the Broadcasting Authority over political broadcasts are about as useful as chocolate teapots.

More than that, the archaic regulations are counterproductive to both the tenets of media pluralism as well as to the interests of a proper democratically informed political debate.

Various independent media houses including this paper and others have taken this laws to task in the past.  Daphne Caruana Galizia had done that during the day of silence preceding the 2013 general election, and was famously arrested for it.

Now one of the country’s smaller political parties, Alleanza Bidla, has taken the Broadcasting Authority’s iron fist to task after the BA banned political broadcasts of its Exodus programme on F-Living TV.

The party, however, has struck back by setting up its own broadcast on the internet and on the popular IPTV platform - transmitting 24 hours a day, every day.  And so far, it seems there is very little that the BA can do about it.  The action is somewhat akin to pirate radio actions of days gone by, broadcasting beyond the remit of the authorities’ reach.

It is understood that the BA is yet to reply to the action, and it could possibly be considering its legal position.  If so, it should rethink any such considerations since this is an issue that could very well explode, possibly even at EU level where matters such as political pluralism and voter enfranchisement are taken very seriously indeed.

While this particular party’s thinking is that while both major parties have their own television and radio stations through which they are able to transmit their own political messages 24/7 without any limitations being imposed on them, there is a major democratic deficit when smaller parties are not even being allowed airtime on other private stations.

Also Former AD chairman and independent MEP candidate Arnold Cassola has written to the European Commissioner for the Rule of Law and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, Frans Timmermans, European Commissioner for Justice, Věra Jourová, and the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, over the allocated time by the Broadcasting Authority to independent MEP candidates during political debates and spots on the national TV stations.

Cassola urged the Authority to allow the participation of independent candidates in political debates with candidates coming from the traditional parties. In his letter, Cassola had described the Authority’s behaviour as ‘obscene’ during the last snap election when small parties were denied the possibility of debating with the two main parties.

Now it is perfectly understandable that the larger parties have larger coffers and greater clout to be leveraged at election time, and that is their absolute prerogative.  But there is clearly something wrong with the formula when smaller parties are being muzzled in this and in other various small ways.

This situation serves the interests of democracy little good, but instead serves the interests of the country’s longstanding PN-PL lopsided political duopoly in very fine fashion indeed.

This whole situation is in line with the period of silence imposed before an election on the media.  These are both  throwbacks to the times when people would have to wait for the next morning’s newspapers to get the previous day’s news.

In the year 2019, we have a new world order when it comes to the dissemination of information. 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 avid social media users, and the country’s thirst for news, gossip and parody about all matters political and contemporary appears to be insatiable.

And then we have the blogs of all political and societal stripes. Some are reputable, some less so and some are downright offensive. In this social media and internet landscape we have the conservatives, the anarchists, the fundamentalists and the liberals – a virtual mishmash of Maltese society and its multifaceted views.

This is all well and good and shows that the Maltese as a people are riding the social networking wave that has swept across the world.

But it is a pity that the country’s electoral laws with respect to the period of silence is still hibernating somewhere at the turn of the 20th, not the 21st, century. In addition to being absurd and redundant, the broadcasting blackout as well as the period of silence, considering today’s changed technological circumstances, also verge on the undemocratic.

This editorial was published in the printed version of The Malta Independent