Lowering the voting age down to 16 is little more than a cynical ploy by politicians to exploit young people's naivety for "easy votes", a leading pedagogist has charged. 

"The political class...knows that young people are easily mesmerised with baubles," Mr Caruana Carabez wrote in a Talking Point published today in the Times of Malta.

"I am always suspicious when politicians agree. But this idea of extending the plebiscite to 16-year-olds is beyond suspicion. Their votes are so easy." 

Mr Caruana Carabez is a member of the National Commission for Further and Higher Education, as well as the director of studies at an English language school.

READ: Talking Point - Leave those kids alone

Pressure to lower the general election voting age has been building in the past months, with politicians from either side of the house seemingly agreeing with the idea in principle. 

They are the modern Pied Pipers, leading children to the glass mountain.- Charles Caruana Carabez

The Nationalist Party and Independent MP Marlene Farrugia last week presented a parliamentary motion calling for the voting age to be lowered, and the proposal also appears in a draft National Children's Policy document published by the Family Ministry last month. 

Youth lobbyists have also backed the idea. The National Youth Council has given the proposal its blessing, and Labour Youth Forum has been similarly enthusiastic about 16-year-olds being allowed to vote in the 2018 general election.

A Times of Malta online poll held last week also suggested most readers are receptive to the idea, with 65 per cent saying they were in favour of lowering the general election voting age. 

16-year-olds can already vote in local council elections, having been granted that right a couple of years back. 

Should Malta lower the general election voting age to 16, it would be the second EU country to do so, with Austria having already done so in 2007. 16-year-olds can also vote in general elections in Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua. Scottish 16-year-olds can also vote in their local elections. 

But despite the sudden interest in the idea, Mr Caruana Carabez has sounded the alarm, insisting that "16-year-olds are still in a formative stage" and many politicians "rapacious vote-grabbers" out to "ravish" the minds of children. 

"Please do not think that they [politicians] are being ‘enlightened’, ‘munificent’, ‘modernist’ or ‘liberal’; they have their eyes on easy votes," he argued. 

Mr Caruana Carabez painted a dark picture of elected officials' intentions. 

"They are the modern Pied Pipers, leading children to the glass mountain," he wrote. "With the aged, you play for time until they die. The politician dies before the 16-year-old voter, and the demands of this voter will be quite florid." 

 

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