Now you see them, now you don’t

I wish the political parties would stop faffing around with new websites, blogs, kitchen visits and whatnot and do something that makes an iota of difference in people’s lives. It’s got to the stage where you can’t go online without being bombarded with requests to pour out your innermost thoughts on some party website.

Political parties really don’t need any more websites to figure out the more common complaints. Reasonable fuel prices, decent roads and less needless pollution would be a good start- Claire Bonello

Presumably, once you’ve unburdened yourself and revealed your greatest longings, these will be channelled to Some Important Party Person. What happens next is anybody’s guess.

Do the faceless people behind the websites actually do something about the requests that are sent in? Can they? It’s not as if there haven’t been four-and-a-half odd years for the government and opposition to get their ears to the ground and suss out what’s bothering people.

They really don’t need any more websites to figure out the more common complaints. I guess that reasonable fuel prices, decent roads and less needless pollution would be a good start. And these aren’t closely guarded secrets. The papers and the comment boards have been awash with complaints about spiralling fuel costs, never-ending road works and over-construction.

If the Nationalist and Labour parties needed to get a feel of what was irking people, the information was all there for the processing. And yet, both parties act as if they have been left completely in the dark and have suddenly discovered the need to ‘re-connect’ and to ‘listen’.

It sounds a bit like something you find in those self-help books about bolstering an ailing relationship. You know – the ones where we read that ‘Communication is key’ and ‘Try to re-live the excitement of your first date’.

At this rate, it won’t be long before we find a politician preparing a candle-lit supper for us before strewing rose petals on the bed. All in aid of ‘connecting’, of course.

Look at the recently-launched Nationalist website www.mychoice.pn and tell me if it isn’t totally irritating. It starts off patronisingly with “Your opinion matters”. Well of course it does. It should go without saying. A party’s electoral fate is dependent on voters’ opinions, so why state the obvious?

There’s more website bumph: “This is the way to make things heard.” Is it really? What about other modes of communication that were available before this latest site popped up?

Were the letters sent or published, the protests made and the discussions held, all exercises in futility?

It goes on: “This website is yours. Use it to send your thoughts, aspirations and stories. The most amusing e-mail we receive will win a romantic dinner for two with an MP.”

I stuck that last bit in myself, but you get the gist. There’s this attempt at cosying up to voters with the adoption of a chatty-chatty tone, to make viewers feel they actually matter and that this is a meaningful attempt at communication.

Maybe I’m being overly cynical, but I’ve seen so many of these websites being launched in a blaze of publicity and then vanishing without a trace once the election was over. Back in 2008, before the election, the Nationalist Party had launched the Gonzipn2008 website. In a bid to emulate the Blackberry-friendly Barack Obama, the Prime Minister would answer e-mails sent to this site personally. Many people were chuffed.

They thought that this was the start of a new-two way communication model with the politician at the top. Well, that state of affairs didn’t last too long. That site also bit the dust and is now in the great graveyard of political sites.

Kate Gonzi’s 2008 blog had a similar fate. It hasn’t vanished into the ether, but the last entry was written sometime in March 2008. Since then not a peep from the Prime Minister’s wife online.

Maybe it’s just as well. Updating a blog regularly is time-consuming. Content has to be constantly updated and it’s useless twittering about communication if you’re posting about things that simply don’t happen.

Take Kate Gonzi’s blog post of February 19, 2008. Entitled ‘Smart Women’, it’s where she enthuses about the launch of the Smart Women campaign financ­ed by the Minister for IT, Technology and Communications.

This was to be a programme providing free ICT training for women who would follow a course leading to certification at all levels.

What actually happened is that a snazzy website was set up with local celebrities waxing lyrical about the wonders of the Smart Island strategy.

Then the basic computer course was held. Women got to know what a mouse was and where the power button was situated. Then it all fizzled away into nothingness, much as I suspect these newbie political sites will.

Is it any wonder that more and more voters are switching off?

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt