The right to citizenship, which we speak so effortlessly about with the risk of it being relegated into a cliché, arises every now and then on the political agenda. Let’s face it, citizenship, or the issue of membership of a society, inevitably carries with it the right to political participation.

The pivotal questions here are: how do we define political participation? How does such civic involvement apply itself? Should age be a factor in affiliation? Is voting the ultimate expression of assignation?

Liberal Democrat Stephen Williams, who championed the ‘vote at 16’ debate in the UK, said that the process of lowering the voting age would be a “vital step in the renewal of Britain’s democracy”.

Here, Josè Herrera, the parliamentary secretary responsible for local councils, in his first public statement during the swearing-in ceremony of the councillors elected last month, announced that a process is about to start to implement an electoral promise. “Parliamentary Secretary Josè Herrera said today that he was starting the process for the voting age for local council elections to be reduced to 16 from the current 18” (timesofmalta.com, March 25, 2013).

Slowly but surely the debate on whether young people aged 16 and 17 should participate in the ballot, whether it is too early to draw young people into politics, whether this will open a Pandora’s box of social vagaries is starting to surface.

In my opinion, 16- and 17-year-olds do have the necessary ripeness and ample knowledge to be able to vote. This is further strengthened by the fact that we do not apply a system of compulsory voting in this country, so this, in truth, could be an opportunity to educate young people at that age to start engaging electorally at local council level.

Apart from that, I react to the issue of electoral competence by stating that it does not apply to other age groups and, if it did, I wonder if, hand on heart, we would allow all adults to get a voting document!

Another positive aspect in having young people vote would be that politicians will start thinking about young people as being part of their constituency.

I believe that, along the years, young people have garnered a great deal of acumen and an ability to analyse what is good for them and respectable for their community. The level of maturity is contextually and historically subjective. In terms of a generation budding with its own distinct characteristics, what, until a couple of decades ago, used to take some 15-20 years for an age band to change in terms of lifestyle, we now see this happening within a span of four to five years.

Voting at 16 in local council elections is another opportunity to start charming young people with the democratisation process of the country.

Naturally, young people may not always or exclusively be interested in partisan politics (or policymaking that stems from our belligerent and overwhelming party influences) but they can most certainly contract with the wider notion of political affairs, specifically, social engagement, interest to transform populations, voice, power, positioning in society, roles, identity and relationships. These are all unswerving attributes of the public system that leads to communal development and civic happenstance.

Regrettably, the impression I get is that young people are, in the main, still not very much involved in the opinion-forming, decision-making processes and are hardly ever consulted except for tokenistic and fortuitous cases. We still seem to hold the opinion that politics is a ‘thing’ for grown-ups when, in reality, politics, not the petty partisan type, is part and parcel of social life and young people should be drawn in and consulted (always in the right forum and with an age-appropriate approach). We also need to keep in perspective the fact that the ease to access information, the improved way we are doing schooling, the opportunities to access in- and non-formal education and the realisation that young people are not just empty recipients likely to be filled up by adults are all constituents that make it absolutely legitimate that young people have the wisdom to ‘vote in’ the people they want to lead their communities. Education in formal and non-formal sorts has a key role to play in this process.

It would be interesting to explore whether this might lead to a situation where a 16-year-old could also serve as a mayor of a town or village or sits as a councillor. As far as I’m concerned, I really do not have a problem with this scenario because I would think that youth will bring the much-needed energy, enthusiasm and drive to make local councils a determining factor and not just a distant addendum to community services and group development.

If given the space, Young people will contribute positively to the community, something which this measure will embolden. I hope that, in good time, we will also see them voting in general elections and referenda. I can’t wait!

Andrew Azzopardi is a senior lecturer at the University of Malta’s Department of Youth and Community Studies.