A healthy local democracy

Last Saturday's elections in one third of the country's local councils showed that the concept of local government in Malta has now been firmly accepted by the electorate at large. A record 71 per cent of eligible voters cast their vote, an increase of nine per cent over the 1997 poll. This is an extremely high turnout and is a much higher figure than most European countries can expect to record in a similar local election.

The record turnout also dismisses once and for all the argument put forward by various Labour Party spokespersons that the participation of political parties in local elections would not be welcomed by voters. The opposite has just happened: the Labour Party contested these local elections for the first time and the voter turnout increased considerably.

The principle of local government, first introduced in the mid-1990's by the Nationalist government, is now entrenched in our culture. Although there is still a lot to be done to give local councils more responsibility and autonomy, one can say that local government is a success story.

Decentralisation is correct in principle and the more control people have over their locality, the better. Nobody understands the particular needs of each town and village in Malta and Gozo more than the local representatives of the different localities. One hopes that the decentralisation trend will continue over the years.

Furthermore, a very important aspect of local elections is the fact that they can be used to measure a particular government's popularity. It is important for any administration to get a feel of the country's mood instead of having to wait for a general election which is held every five years.

How can one interpret last Saturday's election result? In any democracy it is normal for a government to lose some support in a local election sometime after it is first elected to office, especially if certain difficult or unpopular decisions were made.

Governments usually make such decisions in the early part of their administration and last November's budget was a case in point. The Nationalist Party was therefore expecting to lose some votes in these elections, and it did: in 1997 the PN got 50.3 per cent of the popular vote in these localities and last week the party's share of the vote was down to 49.3 per cent.

Labour was given 48.8 per cent of the vote while the independent vote amounted to 1.9 per cent. So although the Nationalist Party obtained a relative majority and got more votes than the Labour Party, its vote did decline.

Although it is difficult to transform such a result on a national scale - only one third of Malta's towns and villages voted and people sometimes vote differently in local and national elections, a subtle message has been transmitted to the government, namely, that the economic cycle still needs some sort of boost or kick-start, and that yes, some people have felt the negative effects of the budget.

The government would be wise to take note of this message and to understand that one third of its term in office is already over.

On the other hand, this result was not a spectacular one for the Malta Labour Party. The Nationalists still got more votes than Labour and there was no massive swing to Labour despite the fact that the country was presented with a rather harsh budget last November.

In the 1997 local council elections, six months after the October 1996 general elections, there was a huge swing towards the PN, then in opposition, and this was way before the infamous Labour budget of November 1997 was presented.

Last week, 19 months into the Nationalist government, four months after a difficult budget, and despite the fact that the country's economy has not yet taken off, the Labour Party's performance was not that impressive. Although the Nationalist Party must not become complacent and must take note of its decline in support, the Labour Party must also take notice of the message sent to it by the electorate.

As usual, both political parties expressed satisfaction at the outcome of the local elections, but a proper analysis by both parties would be in order.