Voting rights: who dropped the clanger?

The leader of an English daily of the 13 November 2014 (‘Voting Rights: Stuck in the Stone Age’) dealt with the stand I took in the Petitions committee which took place this week in Brussels.

The editor evidently did not agree with my stand, as he has every right to do. This might have even been acceptable had the opinion been based on fact, but the opinion shared was complete off mark – as opinions based on a priori wrong premises usually are. This issue does not concern those who live abroad and have the right to vote. It concerns those who, for reasons established by our electoral laws, do not have the right to vote. This is what the editor missed – defining my stand on the matter as a dropped clanger from the Stone Age.

The facts: my stand in the European Parliament was a reaction to a petitioner from the UK who has been living permanently in Spain with her family for many years. Spanish electoral laws do not accord her the right to vote in the general elections, and having lived away from the UK for many years, she and her family members also lost the right to vote in the UK.

Therefore, she approached the petitions committee for assistance so that the committee will request the Commission to enact a law which would impose on member states to allow citizens who live permanently away from their country of origin, and who do not have the right to vote, to be able to vote in their country of origin in the general elections. This would apply to citizens who live everywhere in the world, not just the EU, and who lost their right to vote in their country of origin.

During the debate which evolved, where MEPs from the UK and Germany supported this petitioner, I intervened with the following points:

1. While I appreciate the position which this petitioner has found herself in, such a request for a blanket electoral law, as she was suggesting, is not suitable for countries like Malta, where there are only around 230,000 voters – and not millions as in other countries. Therefore, such a law would have a different impact on small countries then they would on large countries with millions of voters;

2. Electoral laws are, and should remain, in the remit of national governments and not be subjected to cut and paste laws and regulations of the EU. Such laws, where different countries have different demographic exigencies, should be an untouchable sovereign right in the interest of democracy and the rights of the citizens;

3. Having said so, and recognizing that there are Maltese citizens living abroad who by virtue of our electoral laws have the right to vote in the general elections, I stated that their right is to be safeguarded by making it easier for them to exercise their right – through introducing electronic voting or voting in an acceptable location in their country of residence, an embassy, for example. At no point did I have these persons in mind, when objecting to people living permanently abroad to vote, because they are already covered by our current electoral laws and this right should be protected. Nor is there the remotest opinion that such a right should be denied, withdrawn… or whatever the author of the leader decided I meant!

The author of the leader did not seem to agree with my position. But if there was a clanger dropped, it certainly was not mine – the debate and proposed right to vote in general elections was not restricted only to those residing in EU member states as the editor wrongly assumed in the leader and upon which he based his argumentation. If this were so, the petitioner’s argument would have been considered immediately as flawed, as no law discriminating between citizens living in the EU and those who do not is admissible. The thrust of the petitioner’s request to the Petitions Committee and the Commission was simple: the enactment of an EU law which gives the right to vote in general elections to those citizens who live permanently in another country – anywhere in the world – and do not currently have the right to vote.

Rather than having been keen to criticise the messenger at the cost of the message, we would have expected a leader arguing for an update of our electoral laws so that all those thousands of Maltese citizens who live permanently abroad, in America, Australia, Canada, the EU and all over the world, and who currently fall outside the net of legal voters, should be allowed to come to Malta, once every five years and vote for who will govern the 400,000 Maltese who live permanently on the island.

We should expect a leader which argues for the withdrawal of this sovereign right from member states, and solicit that electoral laws should be subjected to a blanket EU law which ignores the demographic size and peculiarities of its member states. I would like to see which political party will agree to this....

We should expect a leader which argues just as vehemently in favour of the rights of those who live permanently abroad (repeat: not those who currently have the right to vote) and ignores the rights of the citizens who live in Malta. Because those who live permanently in Malta have rights too – those rights which should not be distorted by a tsunami of voters who turn up once every five years for a box-ticking exercise and a little holiday with the family, to elect members of parliament they hardly know, and a government which does not directly concern them.

Until I read these leaders I will continue to be stuck in my Stone Age mentality where the interest of my country and basic good sense abodes, and where I will stand up to be counted to safeguard the rights of the citizens – those who reside in Malta and those who do not… while listening to clangers dropping from here and there!

Marlene Mizzi is a Labour MEP (S&D)