It is both interesting and alarming that the majority of non-Maltese residents who are EU citizens and might want to vote in the EU parliamentary elections learnt how to do this only via a letter to this newspaper (March 14).

Alarming because the Electoral Commission, rather than a reader, should have conveyed this advice.

Interesting, because the commission appeared to be keeping the information to itself.

The commission (fairly obviously) has data on all eligible non-Maltese residents – their names and addresses, for a start – and could easily have informed them by post.

Even then, the application for the right to vote in Malta (which appears not to be an automatic entitlement, regardless of what the EU stipulates) requires additional data: date and place of birth, father’s name and mother’s maiden name, passport number, ID number, phone number, date of first registration in Malta, and so on. Yet the commission also has all that information on file.

Maltese residents in Europe appear on voting lists automatically, and can vote in local council, parliamentary and EU elections, while the spirit of the European “community” doesn’t yet appear to have reached, or to have been understood by, or to be wished to be implemented by, the government of Malta.

Come to that, with all that data on its computer, the commission could have automatically updated all the out-of-date Maltese ID cards, some of which expired 10 years ago, without embarking on a ridiculous rigmarole with which it almost immediately realised it was unable to cope. Still, it keeps otherwise unemployed bureaucrats in jobs, one assumes. And keeps the foreigners in their place as second-class (EU) citizens.

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