No representation without taxation

The American War of Independence began when the Britons who had emigrated to the New World rebelled against a tax on tea imposed on them by the British Government -when they had no right to elect their representatives to the House of Commons.

Ever since then it has been a basic and fundamental tenet of democracy, especially in the parliamentary democracies of the Western hemisphere, that taxes could only be levied on citizens if they had participated in the election of the Government which was imposing the taxes. The function of Parliaments has, indeed, always essentially been to approve the levying of taxes, the approval of expenditure of public moneys raised from those taxes and the close monitoring of the way Governments spent the taxpayers’ money.

However, the opposite of all this is also true.

If Governments can only levy taxes because people vote to give them the authority to do so, then it also follows that only people who pay taxes can have the right to vote.

This simple and basic tenet of democracy seems to have completely been lost on Dr Lawrence Gonzi’s ministers in last week’s debate on the amendments to the electoral law.

This latest controversy surfaced because Malta’s sporting confraternity will be representing the country at the GSSE games in Cyprus on the day of the elections for the European Parliament on June 6. Understandably, everyone agreed that our sportsmen and women should, somehow, be allowed to vote before they boarded their planes to represent Malta in Cyprus. The Nationalist Government has, however, used this situation as a pretext to enact amendment which make a mockery of the idea of fair play and transparency in the conduct of elections.

This is due to the fact that Dr Lawrence Gonzi’s Government was only interested in allowing anyone who takes an oath or makes a declaration that he / she will not be in Malta on voting day in local, national or EP elections to vote a week before election day. This was the only amendment to the electoral law that Dr Gonzi’s Government was prepared to pass on the back of the meager one-seat majority it managed to get in last year’s General Elections which gave it a mere 1,500 vote majority thanks to its unscrupulous abuse of all the machinery of Government at its disposal.

Lawrence Gonzi’s Government did not even want to link this amendment to proper checks and balances. It did not accept Labour’s proposal to oblige anyone wanting to vote a week before to even produce an electronic air ticket confirming their booking over the election date. Nor did Lawrence Gonzi’s party want to accept Labour’s related proposal that these people should then produce a boarding card to prove that they had indeed boarded a plane and been abroad on voting day.

It is clear, then that Lawrence Gonzi and his government are not in the least interested in ensuring that elections in Malta are held in a fair and transparent manner.

This is so much the case that, deputy prime minister Tonio Borg and IT minister, Austin Gatt, both cynically admitted during the course of the debate that it is true that there are loopholes in the electoral roll but that nothing can be done to rectify this.

I, for one, strongly beg to differ.

All that is needed is the political will to ensure that these loopholes are plugged.

In this case, all it takes is to counter-check the electoral roll against the list of the people who pay taxes in Malta. People whose name appear on the electoral roll but do not feature in the inland revenue department’s data of Maltese citizens who pay tax in Malta and have not done so for more than a year or who do not receive some form of social benefit should then be struck off the electoral register. This is in keeping with the electoral law which prohibits anyone who has not resided in Malta for at least six months in the preceding 18 months before the publication of the register from having the right to vote.

This is the logical and only way forward if Dr Lawrence Gonzi and his Government want to be taken seriously about ensuring that the electoral process in Malta is both fair and transparent.

Failing that, the Electoral Commission should note these developments and take the initiative itself by applying the 230-year-old principle that there is no taxation without representation together with its corollary that there can be no representation without taxation.