The recent overtly exuberant celebrations by Junior College students for winning the Student Council elections have been largely dismissed as youthful tomfoolery. I think there was more to it than that.
Firstly, it would be short-sighted to dismiss the inappropriate behaviour as simply belonging to a few brikkuni. The explosiveness of the celebrations is rooted in the nature of the student council electoral processes at both Junior College and the University, which are practically paralysed by a system of block-voting along party political lines through the main parties’ youth proxies, SDM and Pulse.
At the University, Pulse has refused to participate in the Kunsill Studenti Universitarji (KSU) elections because the block-voting system excludes its voice completely. This is a large part of the context for the excessive behaviour witnessed at the Junior College. I spoke to some students there during election day and they told me that although voting for a ‘mixed’ council was possible, experience had shown that such a council would just not get anything done because of the political pique between the two student organisations.
Well, some would say, isn’t that democracy? Some win and some lose. But the disputed nature of the democratic process is the crux of the problem here. In our primary and secondary schools, in Social Studies, the school councils and Ekoskola, we teach students that democracy is about service, about civic participation and collaboration for the common good. This spirit animates the Children’s Council and the yearly Children’s Parliament organised by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner.
The Children’s Commissioner needs to take a long, hard look at all the student electoral processes in our post-secondary and tertiary educational institutions
Then in sixth form, students meet the real world. No more namby-bamby political idealism. Now it’s the real thing, with the main parties jockeying for exposure and the loyalty of future voters. The total exclusion of the minority voice is celebrated not only on the different campuses, but in the party media as well.
These elections are teaching students that ‘democracy’ is not about compromise and the common good, but about winning at all costs and then trampling on the minority. How can we expect our future political leaders to be any better than the present sorry lot? And then we lament the lack of participation of students in KSU and other student elections.
Now put all this in the context of 16-year-olds being enfranchised to vote in the national elections. In the present context, can you imagine how this so-called ‘democratic’ reform will transmogrify sixth forms and Mcast into political battlegrounds? Frankly, I am amazed that the educational leadership of these schools and the Malta Union of Teachers have not realised these implications and risen up against the proposals.
One of the University graduation ceremonies a few days ago heard a call for the complete overhaul of the KSU election process. I would go a step further. The Children’s Commissioner needs to take a long, hard look at all the student electoral processes in our post-secondary and tertiary educational institutions to see what kind of democratic values they are informed by and propagating in practice.
Only then can we start to hope for a sounder crop of political leaders in the future.
Daphne+35
Thirty-five days have passed, and the disorientation still there. The determination too, lonelier, but adamantine still. Our bossy, know-it-all elder sister has been murdered, and we miss her terribly, her acid humour, her home truths, her unbelievable courage. She has been spat on and spun even in her grave, and the pain of it is like slow fire.
What can we do? The most important thing is to sustain our outrage like a sacred flame. It must not explode into revenge or curdle into cynicism. We must keep demanding that our institutions rise up to their calling to serve the whole nation.
Nor must we, like Mrs Robinson, turn our lonely eyes to the European Union to await a redemption that will never come. The gestures made by the European Parliament are important, although they have multiple agendas, but the most they can do is encourage us to get down to the long, hard slog of restoring our democracy with our own bare hands.
Meanwhile, in these dark days there are shafts of light still. It was this government’s unparalleled tide of nepotism and sleaze that had moulded Daphne into the fearless crusader she had become. And it is now this government’s crass handling of the aftermath of her murder that has made her an international icon of investigative journalism that will remain, like a buzzing bee, spoiling the government’s party until the full truth of its misdealings is out.
The self-proclaimed most feminist Maltese government in history has a secular woman martyr on its hands, and an indomitable band of women protestors who have been galvanised by her holocaust and who are not motivated by party politics or personal ambition. And it does not know what to do with either. It will, eventually, blink.