A recently announced reform which has got many people talking is a draft bill which will allow 16- and 17-year-olds to become mayors and deputy mayors at local council level.

Announced on Wednesday, the reform basically means that anyone elected with the most votes, coming from the party with the majority of votes can be elected as mayor or deputy mayor, irrespective of age. Until now, 16- and 17-year-olds could contest but could not be appointed mayors even if they are the candidates who obtain the highest number of votes.

“I have no doubt that history is going to look back at this as a step towards the completion of democracy for this country,” Local Government Minister Owen Bonnici said when announcing the reform.

But the reform itself has not been greeted particularly well: many have questioned whether a person of that age has the maturity in order to take up the role of mayor, while others argued that a 16- or 17-year-old should be experiencing other things at that age rather than dedicating themselves to the world of politics.

The matter is certainly not black or white: there are 16- and 17-year-olds who are likely more mature than some adults 10 or 20 years their senior, and ultimately it is up to the voter to decide whether they want to put their faith in someone of that age.

If enough voters judge that the best person to represent them is a person of that age, then who are we to begrudge their choice?  That is democracy after all.

On an intrinsically sociological level, a suggestion by Steve Zammit Lupi – who serves as an independent councillor in Zebbug – that 16- and 17-year-olds should be enjoying themselves and involving themselves in the community through other means such as band clubs and NGOs, while also studying to reach their ambitions, and travelling around the world and experiencing different cultures and people certainly comes across as good advice.

On a purely legal level, there are a couple of questions to ask about this reform.  The draft reform includes provisions which would allow a mayor who is a minor to sign legal documents, such as contracts and cheques, on the local council's behalf.  But still there are questions to be asked on whether local banks – now more and more renowned for their due diligence procedures – would allow something like this to happen.

A pertinent, more general point, which Zammit Lupi pointed out was that from his conversations with young councillors who were elected at the last elections in 2019, he realised that these councillors are frustrated at the lack of resources and space to work, meaning that they give up and see serving in a local council as not worth the while.

Reforms like this can certainly be boasted about as being trailblazing in Europe for involvement of youths in politics, but reforms which strengthen local councils and make them proper tools for change on a community level would be far more useful to the country as a whole.

Various local council mayors have said – even to The Malta Independent on Sunday in interviews – that they do not have enough resources to be able to bring about anything meaningful.

That is where the focus should be.