Old enough to pay taxes, old enough to be exploited?

Speaking of ‘old enough’... I may be exactly that, to find myself torn between two utterly contrasting gut reactions to the idea of lowering the voting age to 16. 

Part of me is reminded of the many times I railed inwardly against Malta’s movie classification system in years gone by: a system which precluded me from watching a film like Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’ (rated 16, as I recall) when it first came out in Maltese cinemas a few months shy of my 16th birthday.

A good 30 years later, I still remember the profound sense of injustice as if it were yesterday. How could it possibly be fair, that friends and acquaintances could watch a movie I couldn’t, simply because their date of birth preceded mine by a few months? Especially when they would go on to talk of nothing else for weeks afterwards... thus utterly ruining the movie for me long before it ever came out on video...

This is where the other reaction kicks in. Eventually, I got my chance to watch ‘Alien’ on Italian TV... and staying up late to watch it felt like a personal act of rebellion against the establishment. Like those kids who sailed to Manoel Island because they couldn’t get there by land, I found there were loopholes allowing me to defy the system’s rules. And defy them I did.

Oh, how I wished I hadn’t! Watching Alien again today, I feel almost embarrassed by how severely it traumatised me at the time. But that kitchen scene with John Hurt – the one where the newly hatched alien larva bursts though his abdomen after tunnelling through his stomach – put me off eating for a ve-e-ery long time. And with that sense of horror and untold dread, came also a newfound sense of realisation. Maybe that classification system was there for a purpose after all. Maybe I’d have been much better off, had I stuck to Dumbo the Flying Elephant.

So when it comes to lowering the voting age, I automatically find myself wondering if the ‘18’ age limit was originally put there for a reason. If the same age-group – more or less, as the ratings have changed – is protected from scary, gruesome or adult-themed films... mightn’t the voting age also be a form of protection in its own right? 

Long before getting there, however, another question arises. Why are we even considering the proposal in the first place? Age limits of any kind are by definition arbitrary things... someone, somewhere, will have decided to draw a line. But there will always be a valid reason for that line to be drawn (whether or not one agrees with where or how). 

Take gambling, for instance. At law, Malta’s Casinos must operate two age-limits at the door: 18 for foreigners, 25 for Maltese passport holders. People complain about the latter – rightly so, because it is absurdly discriminatory – but I have yet to hear anyone arguing that there should be no age restriction at all.

Now: consider a scenario where the government does decide to rescind or relax that law, and set the same age-limit for all casino patrons. How would the process come about? Would the government just wake up one morning, and decide – for no apparent reason – to revise its national gaming policies? My guess is that it would need a little shoving first. It might come from casino operators who want to increase their local patronage; or from a lobby group calling for an end to discrimination, or both. It would almost certainly be opposed by NGOs and agencies involved with problem gambling addicts. So there would have to be some kind of discussion.

In brief, any change to that system is highly unlikely to just pop up out of nowhere. Yet that is precisely what happened in the case of the voting age proposal. It is the sort of idea that might make perfect sense, in a country where voter apathy is an endemic, systemic problem. But Malta is not that country. Hands down, we have by far the highest regular electoral turnout anywhere in the world (except maybe places like Iraq at the time of Saddam Hussein, where a referendum to support the Rais could achieve 100% unanimity... on a voter turnout of 100%). 

Even so, we are not that far off. Traditionally, more than 95% of the electorate is expected to actually vote in any given election. In 2008, voter turnout was 93% – the lowest since 1971 – and people spoke of it in terms of a ‘crisis’. 

So to answer the question ‘is there a need?’... we first have to take a look at the only people who are asking it. Interestingly, it turns out that support for the voting age proposal is unanimous across all parties. And I mean ALL parties. The Labour Party had it in its manifesto for local elections, and has responded warmly to the suggestion of extending it to the national level. This week, the PN’s David Agius presented a petition on the subject with the PDM’s Marlene Farrugia. And AD has been in favour since at least 2012.

No big prizes for guessing why, either. In 2014, there were over 25,000 in the ‘15-24’ age bracket according to the Malta Demographic Profile. This suggests the number of 16-18 year-olds is significantly high, in an electoral system where the result can be swayed by literally a handful of votes.  

But it is not just about numbers. The difference in age between 16 and 18 might be small in terms of years; but it represents an unbridgeable chasm in lifestyle, worldview and general aspirations. Lowering the voter age will not merely increase the size of the electorate itself – it will also introduce a radically different voter segment to appeal to, calling for radically different electoral strategies.

Here, the beginnings of a solution to this enigma can be discerned. The ‘need’ for this change is clearly not dictated by the country’s own exigencies – I’d say we need around 10,000 new voters like we need a bullet in the head – but by a very real political necessity experienced by all four political parties simultaneously. 

Clearly, a point of no return has been reached with the present electoral crop. There is nothing left in the parties’ collective bag of tricks, with which to mesmerise and stupefy an audience that has seen and heard everything before. This is why the political ambient noise has not really changed in the last couple of decades – it’s always the same old mantras, in the same order, appealing to the same (albeit dwindling) proportion of die-hards.

Now, there are indications that the parties’ dominance in all things is beginning to crack. Earlier I took a pot-shot at the supposed ‘crisis’ of the 2008 result. The word was an exaggeration, but it is undeniable that interest in politics waned on that occasion, and has waned further since then. The Nationalist Party is now visibly struggling to attract people to its activities at local level (as a certain blog delights in pointing out). Labour has lost much of its sheen since Panamagate, especially with floating voters. AD has never managed to interest more than 3% to vote for it in the first place. I’ll admit it’s too early to say with PDM, but initial polls suggest a similarly lukewarm reception.

It might not amount to a crisis, but it certainly looks like the political propaganda machine has hitched on a snag. We old fogeys are no longer turned on by party politics... not like we were in the good old days. But the younger ones... they’d be new to this game. They’ve never had to pay too much attention to all the old mantras. Maybe they would, if they actually had a vote...

Yes: put like that, I can see the need completely. I can fully understand the urgency with which petitions are suddenly presented in parliament, and unlikely alliances forged between parties which only seem to ever agree on things that are in their own interest.

What about everyone else’s interest, though? Including the 16-18 year-olds themselves, who have so far generally been spared the invasive, intrusive and – let’s face it – toxic effects of full-on exposure to politics in this country?

Here again I am in two minds. Maybe Maltese politics – toxic and venomous as it is – does need an incursion of young blood. Maybe it’s like Keith Richards, and requires an occasional full-body blood transfusion just to stay alive. But that also means we are looking at the entire 16-18 age group as a glorified life support unit, for the benefit of moribund political parties that have already exhausted their capital with all other voter segments.

Call me a cynical old fart, but that sounds like exploitation to me. The enthusiasm and verve of youth could surely be better expended elsewhere.