Sending 16+ off track

I do not agree that Malta should consider extending the popular vote to youngsters who turn 16, and that we should experiment this course of action with the local elections. I do not agree at all. I may find myself in a clear minority - the proposal, mooted by Alternattiva Demokratika and agreed upon by the youth movement of the Nationalist Party, now has the backing of Joseph Muscat.

It is rare indeed to find such tripartite agreement over a new and potentially controversial issue. But there you have it. Malta is nothing if not a cauldron where surprises bubble along with many other imponderables.

The idea, if I understand it correctly, is to introduce young people to politics at an earlier age than 18, the present threshold to make one eligible to the right to vote in elections. That is precisely one of the major reasons why I find no merit whatsoever in the suggested move.

We are already an island where partisanship is embedded in all the strata of society. Where politics play a larger part in the daily game than old traditional commitment to one village saint or the other. Even more that the most hot-headed support for foreign football clubs or national teams, like Juventus, Inter, Milan, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool, to mention but a few. We breathe, eat and dream politics. No exchange of views is complete without politics coming into it, at times in a very unbeautiful fashion.

Worse than that, we argue politics from positions set in intellectual concrete. We leave not a hair's breadth for the possibility that there might be a feasible alternative to our position, that our preferred party could be slightly less than 1,000 per cent correct. We are as near political fundamentalists as can be.

The proponents of the 16+ experiment are effectively saying that such dire political hard-headedness should start earlier. Rather than pointing out to our younger generation that youth is a formative period, they want to lead them into an adolescence totally committed to a political party.

Youth should be a time of questioning, a time for doubting, a time for challenging traditional views, wherever they come from. The 16+ proponents are saying: get used to political commitment as early as you can, question and throw bricks at the other side, but be loyal to your party first and foremost.

In stark contrast youths should be loyal to nothing but a questioning mind. That is how they can get the best education of life, whichever school they attend or drop out from. Youth should be effervescent, not rigid. Challenging, not conforming. Youth is a time to learn by sampling as many alternative ideas as can be. And not for entering into a political cage before the springtime of one's life has barely began.

A seemingly softly softly approach is being proposed, but the objective is unmistakable. Start with local elections, we're told, as if these were not an integral part of our political infighting.

Local elections in Malta are a surrogate for fully fledged by-elections in places like the UK. Politics run the full gamut in our local elections, which are local in name alone.

Success or failure of this weird experiment would be judged by how much youths side with one party or another. The vote for a particular party will be the measuring stick of the enterprise.

It is not just that, in their teens youths should concentrate on fashioning a good educational basis related to their aptitudes and attributes.

That they ought to be exploring which ways lead to a good future, hopefully the future of their choice. The point of it all - youth - is that young people should be free spirits.

They should not be old fashioned angels in marble for the political class to carve according to its bent. Certainly, many of our youngsters will have starting opinions about politics. Let them express these freely, as some do. Let them write in the media, contribute to blogs, march in the street in support of one cause or another.

But, for pity's sake, tie them not to a political wagon. Blinker them not. Do not place shackles over their intellect.

Encourage youngsters to speak out, of course. There is no voice that deflates windbags, cuts through hypocrisy better than that of the younger generation. Politicians should hear what they are saying to them - not because they are tomorrow's voters, but because theirs is the energised voice of raw, uncorrupted honesty.

As youths shed their innocence they become more aware, more critical of what goes on around them.

Let them shout out. Let everybody sit up and take notice of their evolving views.

But let the fresh breeze of youth blow without trying to harness it for one party or the other. It will blow more sweetly for that.

Muscat has made a strong mark in the few weeks he has been at the Labour helm. He has given the lie to the Nationalist line which tries to project him as immature.

The Nationalists have had to stoop to juvenile political delinquency to try to score underhand points, referring to Muscat as 'Joe' instead of his preferred 'Joseph'. So far, he has generally been on the right track.