Thursday, 28th August 2008
Sure, go ahead and lower the voting age
The latest stir in Malta’s ever-active, yet largely demotivating political scene has been caused by none other than Joseph Muscat’s opinion piece on The Times last week, when he declared himself in favour of reducing the voting age to 16 years (initially for local council elections).
I do not dislike the idea. Rather, I was aghast by people (like one member of KSJC – Kunsill Student Junior College) who argued that giving the vote to 16-year-olds was tantamount to giving an extra vote to their parents.
I cannot agree that people who vote like their parents do simply because they are sixteen years old. There are many reasons why you might choose to vote like your parents – maybe you are over-loyal to your family, maybe you feel like your family owes a particular politician, or you are unable to decide for yourself and let people you trust decide for you. Or maybe you simply agree with your parents. If you vote like your parents when you are sixteen, chances are you will vote like your parents when you are eighteen, and thirty, and sixty.
When I was sixteen I was pretty bad at articulating my thoughts so I avoided political arguments, but just because I did not speak my mind did not mean that I did not have a mind of my own and that I would not use it in the mighty polling booth.
Lowering the voting age can be a way of balancing the effect of an aging population on the outcome of elections. Too many people still vote for a party because of what it was in the 60s or the 70s. Labour legalized homosexuality in the seventies, but if I was a homosexual now I wouldn’t be voting for Labour because Labour in 2008 has no papers on gay rights. The more people there are who can vote for a party because of what it is instead of what it was, the better.
Yet I must admit that, wonderful and forward-thinking as this discussion is, I can hardly be expected to get excited by it, considering the much bigger issues in our electoral system which are not receiving any attention. If a sixteen-year-old cannot vote this year, by the next election he will be given the right to vote and his vote will be as important as the vote of an 80-year-old grandmother who has twelve children and 50 grandchildren. In contrast, all the citizens who believe in not voting for MLP or PN will never be given the right to a vote that matters, because of the different measures the electoral system imposes on other parties. Wouldn’t we be better off proposing ideas to solve these problems?
So while I think that yes, lowering the voting age makes for an interesting discussion, until we fix the bigger issues in our democracy Dr Muscat’s idea will continue striking me as just a pretty cloud in the sky.
Lara Vassallo is a second year Medicine Student and is incoming editor of www.insite.org.mt. This blog was produced by Insite – The Student Media Organisation. www.insite.org.mt
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Comments
@ "but if I was a homosexual now I wouldn’t be voting for Labour because Labour in 2008 has no papers on gay rights"...actually Labour's policy is that there should be the availabilty of recognised Civil Unions for gays. What makes me wonder is how certain gays support GonziPN (support which might include the organistion/orchestration/fabrication/etc./etc . of certain "events") when Dr Gonzi had declared that he wont accept gays on the PN ticket (a pledge which, as most of us now, has been broken...). Not that I'm satisfied with Labour's policy in this area, since I'm in favour of gay marriage, but I reckon that it's unfair to say that Labour has no policies at all about gays
As far as staying at home surely that is the problem certainly here in the UK apathy reigns.
I did say I admired the Maltese turn out figures as I was in Malta during and just after your recent election.
Mr Debattista-
You are right, SDM in KSU has failed to inspire students with its keen insistence on toeing the party line, but who is rewarding the bootlickers?
I refuse to think that raising awareness about the fact that Students House is run by a group of yes-men from Triq Herbert Ganado is ‘useless moaning’, as you call it.
You also seem to think that abysmal student participation is a campus issue, not a national one.
Yet, our students are our future workforce, and the apathy inculcated within them by our soulless educational system and orwellian approach to student politics will spill out into the community once they leave the Tal-Qroqq ghost town.
Today’s students are our future, so yes, I think this is a national issue, and a pressing one at that.
Muscat would be making a far more valid contribution if he were to address the hegemony of political parties over student politics, instead of this poppycock about giving the vote to sixteen year olds.
So you seriously need Joseph Muscat to explain why SDM hijacked KSU this year? You need Joseph Muscat to explain the lack of student participation on Campus? Making students more active is the job of KSU and all student organisation. KSU must make itself relevant to the lives of students. Its useless if we keep moaning about the issue. Students do not participate because they feel that student politics on campus is not relevant. In other European countries, students are more active because the Student Council takes matters seriously and defends their rights at all cost. As long as we have student councils headed by Dar Centrali workers, (and everybody knows this, but no one wants it to end!) it's useless moaning on the issue.
As for the MLP electoral defeat report....well, it's just an expression of the selected commission opinion, nothing else! In other European countries, we find political branches in various universities, but here in Malta, it's a sin seeing a political party's youth section on campus! :s
n.b. http://www.votesat16.org.uk/
I actually admire your voting turnout there in Malta . Here in the UK 50% would be considered good and most youngsters here would not be in the figure as they have no idea what each party stands for or what their policies are or how it would effect them, also the usual comment is " It will make no difference whether we vote or not ".
Muscat must put his progressive credentials to the test, and tell us why he thinks this year's KSU took office without an election (the Christian Democrats were uncontested).
Disillusionment with student politics prevails on campus. A crop of students who are passionate about progress can change that- but for this to become a tangible reality, the political class must strive to create a climate where freedom of speech and representation are not merely convenient buzzwords.
In this regard, the old MLP has disappointed me. A quick look at the Youth Section of their Defeat Report, shows no consideration for the dire quagmire student representation is in.
Rather, it suggests that the MLP should follow the Christian Democrats' example in producing a partisan student newspaper on campus.
Muscat, get your priorities right. This is a far more important youth issue!
As for us students, we must unite to campaign not for earlier voting, but for the overthrow of the bipartisan stalemate that is Maltese student politics. Muscat is insisting on freedom to vote for under sixteen year olds, when University students in their twenties are still struggling for freedom of speech.