It is not surprising that the forthcoming local council elections have been eclipsed by the upcoming election of five members of the European Parliament. Both are to be held on the same day but the first is generally considered more important than the second as is so well reflected in the way the main political parties are pushing their candidates for the European Parliament. Indeed, local councils do not exactly enjoy much sympathy and, even though the Nationalist Party says they have been a success story, many do not share its views on this.

Local councils are looked upon differently. There are those who think, as the PN does, that they are badly needed in order to decentralise the Administration. But others are highly critical of them and, even among this group, there are many who simply dismiss their usefulness totally, arguing they are a waste of public money. Political parties look at councils as fertile political training ground for aspiring new candidates for their party but those in the opposing camp blame the councils for increased political polarisation. They see them as merely glorified government offices and consider wardens, who have earned the wrath of so many over the years, as mere cash cows, irrespective of whether or not the cash, or most of it, goes for the councils or for private contractors.

One problem is that it is difficult to revamp the local councils' image when so many of them persist in giving the impression, justifiably or not, that they are out to penalise the people within their jurisdiction. It is therefore their frame of mind that has first to be reformed before anything else. And the more they get involved in politics, or in allowing themselves to be considered as part of the party for whose interests they are, in most cases, elected in the first place, the more complicated the problem is likely to get. For in such an environment people will continue to consider them as a mere extension of the party. This is one reason why there are those who feel councils ought to be taken out of the political party orbit. Running diametrically against this argument is the other that, without the parties' involvement, the councils will die out.

What is striking is that, contrary to the perception of many, including of political parties, the relevance of local councils in everyday life is not considered to be very important by the overwhelming majority of the Maltese, at least according to the outcome of an EU-wide survey published in Brussels in March this year. It may have come as a shock to the PN, for example, to learn from the survey that the Maltese are in fact the least within the EU to think that local authorities can make a difference to their lives. This is quite a categorical negative assessment of the value of the councils, one that has, very surprisingly, barely caused a ripple in Malta. Why? Because it has not yet sunk in, or simply because the political parties have other important matters to attend to?

The Nationalists would be against the second argument, holding, quite reasonably, that they would not have launched the local council reform had they not believed in the value of local councils. Well, that is true, but local councils have generally performed so well below general expectations that the people can hardly be blamed for having such a negative attitude towards them.