Learning from experience!

One's heart went out for Olivia Lewis when Malta's name was not mentioned as one of the lucky countries to make it for the finals of the Eurovision Song Festival. The phenomenon of block voting is not a new concept, albeit a very cheap anti-democratic one. It was also used in other years during the final stages of the song contest. It seems that this year it was more blatant than ever. Eureka!

One wonders what should be done. Should Malta take a cowardly retreat or should we fight as courageous Maltese? Where there is a will there is a way and I am pretty sure that the festival organising committees can come up with a more equitable solution. I wonder whether the group system that FIFA uses for the World Cup European qualifiers could provide a silver lining. In this group system, good teams are intermingled with less favourite ones and they compete between them rather than have the whole of Europe competing.

This brings me to Malta and its electoral system. The House of Representatives will soon be debating a very important constitutional amendment for our electoral system. It looks very clear that all parties agree that Gozitans should vote within one district. This makes a lot of sense, especially in the context of Gozo being a special region with its own beauties and problems.

Notwithstanding, I would like to raise some further issues that a lot of fellow citizens raise on our electoral system. Since my young age, people have grumbled time and time again on the advantages offered by the Roman alphabet in our voting system. In an ideal world it should not be the case but, regrettably, in a real one it does!

In the real world the lucky ones with their surname beginning with the first letter of the alphabet have a major advantage over the ones with a surname beginning with a letter that happens to be somewhere in the middle or at the end. Mind you, it is not always the case! If one's name happened to be just after that of the leader of a major party, one can still consider oneself lucky. We have all witnessed this system favouring one candidate over another simply because of the initial letter of one's surname. This usually happens in casual elections. Procedures like the Robson rotation or other randomised rotation systems may prove to be fairer than the alphabetical one.

Most of those who have voted in districts having many candidates have experienced some anxiety when the moment of truth comes and they must know that illiteracy does not always play a role in making mistakes. What about putting photos of candidates near their names? This will definitely ease the anxiety level and facilitate the process for the unfortunate people with reading difficulties. This holds for both the visually-impaired and those people with learning difficulties. Let's not bring the excuse of expense because, thanks to with modern systems, adding photos near names should not increase costs exorbitantly.

Something close to heart is the voting system for patients in hospitals. I speak both as a medical doctor and a politician. Trust me, the last thing a patient wishes to do while in hospital is to be shuttled by an ambulance in front of a crowd of people to his voting polling booth. How ridiculous can we be! My feeling is that the main reason for patients in a hospital not voting in a mixed ballot box within the hospital is a level of mistrust from both parties. I am more than certain there will be a myriad of other legitimate reasons that my naivety is overlooking. I still believe, however that a solution can be found for the sake of our patients. Alas, it could be easily you or me having to be shuttled!

This brings me to a further point. Some time back the Nationalist Party had written to the Chief Electoral Commissioner asking him to consider ballot papers adapted for the visually impaired. Both the use of a Braille template and/or a tape recording system were suggested to aid the visually impaired to vote independently. In an era which emancipates the disabled this should be reconsidered by the Electoral Commission.

With the general election soon knocking at the door, let us all hope the Electoral Commission has the courage to make the necessary changes in our voting system... changes that could make the electoral system even more equitable. The whole process has to be sustained, of course, by us politicians and the major political parties.

Dr Cassar is a Nationalist member of Parliament.