The campaign for Saturday's local council elections is becoming increasingly more polarised and strident. It is easy to see why. Aside from the possibility that Labour will derail the Nationalists from their Gzira and Mosta strongholds, Saturday is a rehearsal for the next general invitation to the whole of Malta and Gozo to turn out their preferences. The point that strikes most is not the polarisation. The political game thrives on absolute clash and contrast between competing parties. It is the stridency that is most telling.
Parties and candidates are offering their wares by shouting more loudly than ever before. They shout to rouse the electorate. They yell at each other. Candidates have been knocking on doors and sending pleading mail to voters at a level not far removed from that of candidates standing in general elections. Nothing wrong there, and some of the personalised template letters pushed through letter-boxes are quite amusing. Example: A sitting councillor up for re-election unctuously informs voters he has made representations about some problem in their particular neighbourhood they are not even aware of.
And, since the result of the voting is a very large and statistically significant opinion poll, it is to be expected that the political parties will rubbish each other while each one proclaims it is simply the best. All fun and games, which, in reality, take place every weekend, whether elections are on or not.
What is no fun at all is the way local councils are being depicted by the two main political parties. The main spokesmen, right up to the leaders, have taken to proclaiming that "their" councils invested and achieved so much (and thousands of liri and percentages are inserted in each case). According to the parties and their leaders, the local councils follow the national model.
Under that, the majority party forms the government, which becomes the national political administration for the length of the Legislature. The minority party (or, if such is the case, parties) forms the opposition. The duty of the government is to administer by running the Executive part of the separation of powers. The duty of the opposition is to oppose. If it has good political sense, it also proposes alternative policies. The pay structure emphasises the nature of the national model.
On the government side, the ministers and parliamentary secretaries, who run the Executive, get a salary. Not such a handsome one, but around double what government backbenchers and opposition MPs get. Only the Leader of the Opposition gets a "full" salary too. The model is clear. It could be improved with more propensity towards consensus on critical issues. Yet, by and large, it works well. However, it should not also be the model followed by local councils.
The local election will be politically charged. But, once it is over and the councillors are elected, their operational model should be to work collectively for the good of the locality. The fact that only mayors receive a small fee of office underpins that conclusion.
There are, in fact, councils that follow this positive local model. They allocate duties, or spheres of attention, to each councillor, and leave politics outside their room. They function well and each councillor can take pride in, and be accountable for, his/her allocated area of duties. This council model is being undermined by the political parties. They do not encourage the voter to give preferences according to real or perceived personal competence.
The parties are ensuring that politics take over the local councils, with the minority members becoming stumbling blocks to sensible united action. It is that wasteful model which the political parties want voters to find attractive on Saturday. Nobody should be surprised if, once again, between a fourth and fifth of eligible voters in the locality refuse to find the model interesting, and stay away.