Please keep your children at home

With promised freebie season in full swing, while I’m still trying to understand where all the money for these proposals is meant to come from, I find myself growing increasingly uncomfortable watching MP hopefuls “advertising” themselves. The source of my discomfort? The use of their children for their self-promotion.

It’s been said so many times before that babies and children should not be involved in political campaigns, and, yet, here we are in 2026 with politicians parading their children to clearly depict what wholesome, family-oriented people they are. It’s super, super weird, and what makes it all even worse is how staged it all looks.

I’ve seen several videos floating around and, to be honest, I don’t get it. Am I meant to feel some surge of sympathy towards you because you made a joke with your daughter? Or because you took her out on a bike ride? Am I meant to think, ‘Oh look, this person can procreate and spend time with their kid, I can definitely trust them to take on the developers’ lobby and help with the cost of living?’ Because if that’s the case, I’d like to reassure everyone that, if anything, it makes me suspicious of what you’re potentially offering. No one usually brings out the child card unless they’re desperate.

Just last week, I passed a group of seven- or eight-year-olds at the playground arguing and shouting over politics, and it honestly broke my heart.

What kind of country promotes this form of brainwashing for its children? I’m still not over Malta’s parliament allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote, let alone hearing primary schoolchildren squabble over God knows what they’ve heard at home.

What kind of voting culture are we promoting when children are indoctrinated at such a tender age and no one seems to see the problem with this?

And while we are on the topic of things that shouldn’t be happening in 2026, why are we still subsidising cheap flights for people to come home and vote?

Are we sitting on some kind of unextracted goldmine that no one told me about?

After years and years of debate, why has nothing been done to allow citizens to vote from Maltese embassies and consulates or even electronically?

It’s honestly ridiculous that we are expected to take time off and pay out of pocket just to be able to exercise our voting right. We have been in the European Union for 22 years; I’m pretty sure we could have rustled something up by now if we’d cared enough to do so.

I suppose the bottom line is that we have 23 more days to go till this circus is over and I’ve already had it.

I don’t know if anyone can fulfil the promises they keep making, particularly with our humongous national debt, or if it even matters to the population anymore, but I do know that the more things change on this tiny rock, the more they stay the same or actively get worse.

Keep your children at home and off your social media. They really are super cute but trying to take advantage of that cuteness isn’t.