My voting challenge

ONE of my criticisms of the political parties in the Balearics is that they have basically ignored us, the non-Spanish Europeans, over the last four years and have done little or nothing to try and court our vote. In other words since the great buzz of the last elections when we were able to vote for the first time, we've been basically forgotten and I don't like being forgotten and only courted at election time. So I've decided to mount a small election challenge. I am a completely undecided voter so I want to be persuaded why I should vote for one party or the other. So in otherwords I give the political parties until Wednesday (February 26) to send me information or contact me on why I should vote for them. If by Wednesday I have not received any information then on election day in May I will just go to the beach and forget the whole thing. Now I know that many parties haven't got their manifestos ready yet but they must have some idea what they plan to do. Before the political parties dismiss my election challenge I would remind them that this newspaper is being read by almost the exact number of people who have already stated their intention to vote, about 15'000. I will announce the results of my survey in this column on Thursday. In other words if we are to avoid the expatriate apathy which hit the last elections, the political parties need to get their act together and start now. If people don't show up at the end of May to vote it is not their fault they just haven't had the proper attention which as a voter they should receive.

So come on the clock is ticking, persuade me if you can because otherwise you won't catch me in May.