Malta’s Generation Europe will vote in 2019

Jamie* handles the 12 buttons on his controller effortlessly while jostling the two analogue sticks as he communicates remotely with his friends, who have joined the party.

And if this description is confusing, you are probably from an older generation where party involved inviting friends over at home to drinks, food and music.

But in Jamie’s world, party is a group of friends connected via the internet, talking to each other as they play the same Playstation game online. While they do so, their iPads are next to them, playing some YouTube video.

Jamie and his friends are playing a war game where players are first-person shooters, battling hundreds of other youngsters from around the world. It is a dramatically different form of gaming experience from the time when Doom, another first-person shooter, first made an appearance on floppy disks in the 1990s and the internet was a slow dial-up connection.

Jamie was born in 2003, the same year that Maltese voters, twice-over, decided that the country’s future should be in the EU. After saying ‘Yes’ to EU membership in a referendum, voters confirmed their choice in the general election that came a month later.

Eddie Fenech Adami was prime minister and Alfred Sant the Opposition leader.

According to the 2011 census there were, at the time, 7,823 eight- and nine-year-olds. Those children will be 16 and 17 next year, with a right to vote

Jamie’s generation has lived all its life in European Malta, where seamless travel between member states is a fact of life. It is a generation that hardly recalls the existence of the Maltese Lira, which was replaced by the euro when they were five years old.

Jamie’s generation is also one that does not read newspapers, hardly follows television and gets its information from social media that is accessible every time, everywhere from smartphones.

And Facebook may not necessarily be the social media platform of choice because that belongs to older people. Snapchat and Instagram are the snazzier alternatives.

The information that trends is most probably the gossip about film stars, singers and YouTubers – a new breed of internet personalities.

Political talk could be boring but a short 60-second video with subtitles doing the rounds on social media and breaking down an issue into digestible bites may be engaging. Staying home while connected online is a preferred option to going out and getting boozed.

For youngsters like Jamie watching movies on Netflix and listening to music on Spotify are as normal as CDs and DVD rentals were for the teen generation in the 1990s.

Like any teenager, Jamie is more likely to be influenced by friends than his parents, whom he views as old fashioned and suffocating.

And next year, Jamie and his ilk will get to vote in the European Parliament election as the voting age will be brought down to 16.

According to the 2011 census there were, at the time, 7,823 eight- and nine-year-olds. Those children will be 16 and 17 next year, with a right to vote.

Reaching out to these young voters will be a different ball game altogether for the political class.

The change piloted by Reforms Parliamentary Secretary Julia Farrugia fulfils the Labour Party’s electoral pledge to extend the Vote 16 concept from local council elections to national elections.

The parliamentary discussion to change the Constitution starts tonight and there is cross-party consensus on the matter. The change will usher in a historic milestone for Maltese democracy.

Writing in MaltaToday, Farrugia says the reform will empower youth by giving them a stronger voice.

“I have absolutely full faith in our youths; be it at sports, culture, voluntary work and student activism, they’re doing a splendid job… this will bring about a much-needed breath of fresh air in politics,” she writes.

Malta will be one of a handful of countries worldwide where the voting age for national elections is 16 and only the second EU country after Austria.

In 2015, 16 and 17-year-olds were allowed to vote in local elections for the first time. According to the Electoral Commission from the 4,485 youngsters who were eligible to vote, 62.3% cast their ballot. The outcome dispelled the impression many have had; that 16-year-olds would not even bother to head to the polling station.

It is plausible to extrapolate a similar outcome, or better, for national elections when the national hype kicks in and Sundays are reserved for mass meetings preceded by pumping music.

But this new generation will bring with it a different dynamic to the political debate. Targeting Jamie’s interests, concerns and aspirations will require a new way of doing politics. For starters, it is a generation that is more apt to engage with content that is shared by friends on social media.

Political parties have been adapting to this reality, as evidenced by the political intensity that characterised Facebook feeds for the good part of a year up to last June’s general election. Expect this to increase as politicians try to engage with a growing audience that receives its information almost exclusively through social media.

But political engagement has not been for everyone. Professor Andrew Azzopardi, dean of the Faculty for Social Wellbeing at the University of Malta, argues that so far only “a small group” of young people are engaged in non-governmental organisations, including the student political groups at sixth form, higher secondary and MCAST.

“This is why Vote 16 is good news since it will give young people the space to do and say what they think and believe,” he says.

The legal changes being contemplated so far for 16-year-olds limit election participation to voting and not contesting.

Azzopardi believes this should be widened. “I am a strong believer that young people should be given the opportunity to contest elections as well. We’ve had enough of the politics of confrontation that has led to a dichotomised country.”

Whether youngsters like Jamie can bring a bout of fresh air into the polarising discourse of Maltese politics still has to be seen but Azzopardi is optimistic.

“I believe young people will give the much-needed respite to the weak dialectic we have become used to in our political landscape and while this change in legislation will be hard for some to fathom we may very well soon realise the positive impact these new voters will bring about,” Azzopardi says.

*Jamie is a characterisation of a typical 15-year-old youngster, based on information the author has gleaned from parents of teenagers.