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Kurt Sansone
Good slogans and slick marketing alone will not be enough to see Euro-candidates elected on 12 June, but they do help especially in an election that has done away with the traditional districts.
Taking on a national profile is crucial for any EP hopeful given the high threshold of votes required to get elected and the impossibility of meeting people on a one to one basis in their homes as happens in general election campaigns.
A new frontier in the American-style personality campaigns being conducted by some of the candidates is the internet, even if virtual territory remains alien to a vast majority of voters.
As yet only a handful of prospective Euro-MPs have launched their personal web sites and the quality still leaves much to be desired.
Only six candidates have web sites up and running while three independent candidates have utilised the web site of the association or organisation they hail from to promote themselves.
Half of the Labour Party candidates have gone virtual - Joseph Muscat, Wenzu Mintoff, John Attard Montalto and Glenn Bedingfield – while only two Nationalist Party contenders – Michael Falzon and Simon Busuttil – have launched their personal sites. Alternattiva Demokratika’s Arnold Cassola was the first one online.
MaltaToday analysed the personal websites currently made available to internet users and came up with the following verdict.
Top site
From the personal sites, Joseph Muscat’s certainly comes out tops with its clean design and constantly changing content. The site is easy to navigate and despite the volume of content available it is not cluttered.
Muscat’s campaign slogan, ‘Start Change,’ is prominently displayed on the top right hand side of every page.
Muscat resists the temptation of using the web site to ask for votes and opts to promote himself as somebody who is working, with news snippets on his campaign trail.
The site also provides for a measure of interactivity by allowing users to email Muscat with their queries. Users can also sign up to email alerts or to Muscat’s ‘Team for Change.’
The downside of the web site is its similarity to maltastar.com, the MLP’s online newspaper which Joseph Muscat heads. Various aspects related to the look and feel, not least the use of the colours blue, red and white, remind browsers of maltastar.
Another negative aspect is the area reserved for links to other websites on the bottom right hand side of the page. To start with, only links to Labour Party owned sites are listed, making it a rather poor resource. Secondly it could have been presented in a more simple fashion without displaying the logos of the linked sites.
Chaos
Glenn Bedingfield’s foray into the online medium is not as impressive as the campaign he is conducting with the party’s grassroots. The site is slow to upload and news of the campaign trail, although exhaustive, is presented all over the page in a chaotic fashion.
Design is anything but clean and the layout of the different sections leaves much to be desired. Navigation is not easy and a chequered blue column on the right hand side of the page serves no purpose whatsoever.
The website also comes with an animation on the top part of the page next to a photo of Bedingfield with a halo-like brightness in the background. Accompanied with music the animation calls on users to give Bedingfield their number one vote.
Bland stuff
Wenzu Mintoff has claimed his space on the internet but unfortunately he has simply used the web page as a static advert for his beliefs and profile.
It can hardly be called a site because it is a simple one-page display with no links to different pages. There are two outside links, one to the homepage of the European Socialist Parties and the other to the MLP web site.
The design is simple but lack of interactivity means that Mintoff has not used the full potential of the Net.
As for John Attard Montalto’s site, it is a mixture of bland and tasteless design fraught with errors. Rather than giving prominence to the candidate or relevant campaign news, the homepage displays a series of links, which although useful are definitely in the wrong place.
Campaign news is to be found on the right hand side and is mainly made up of articles written by Attard Montalto. An interesting aspect unexplored by other personal sites is the constant provision and update of EU-related news by an external news site, EU Observer.com.
The site also displays a number of quotes from leading poets, writers and historic public figures, which however seem out of place in the context of a campaign website.
Navigation is wrought with errors as links lead to nowhere or simply reroute to the main page.
Green space
Arnold Cassola’s personal space on the internet has no outstanding design, but is easy to navigate and content-wise is quite comprehensive.
The links section only contains web links directly connected to Alternattiva Demokratika and the European Green Party, which makes it a rather poor resource area for surfers.
However, the news section is informative and quite comprehensive. It tracks Cassola’s campaign events but also has a European outlook in that it includes news from the European Greens’ Europe-wide campaign. It is distinct from the section that displays articles written by Cassola in the press.
It is a pity that the news is not displayed on the front page, which has a rather static design with its message to voters on why Cassola should be elected to the European Parliament.
The site is the only one that allows users to download posters pertaining to Cassola’s campaign and also asks for feedback from surfers.
Maltese cross
Simon Busuttil’s site has a simple straight-forward design that provides for easy navigation between the various sections. The different shades of blue and grey as a backdrop for the home page and the other sections give the site a rather monotone look and feel, which coupled with the lack of changing content on the front page provide for a lack of dynamism.
However, text is very readable and users can also register for campaign updates or ask the candidate questions about the EU.
Busuttil’s logo on the top left hand side displaying his name and surname surrounded by the EU stars is original in that it also portrays the eight-pointed Maltese cross as one of the EU stars.
The links section, described as ‘More EU Info,’ contains a comprehensive list of useful links that gives a description of the site alongside the site address. The links not only refer to homepages related to the EU but also to particular subjects such as EU Grants, EU Constitution and Your Rights as an EU Citizen.
Static blue
Michael Falzon’s website with its blue background, navigation node on the left hand side and clean layout, is a simple no-frills site that however lacks dynamism.
The buttons offering a choice of either English or Maltese on the homepage for two particular sections is a good idea. However, the link buttons could have flowed underneath each other following the curve that separates the navigation area from the rest of the site.
Falzon suffers from the same problem as Busuttil. The lack of changing content does not stimulate surfers to visit the site regularly and most news snippets are articles and letters written by Falzon and published in the press.
The links section provides surfers with some useful resource for further research about the EU but is not comprehensive.
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