Everybody, apart from the PMSD that is, seems dead-set against the reintroduction of the communal census. The MMM – that abolished the census in 1983 obviously doesn’t want it back, the government is not keen and the Labour Party thinks it will open a ‘Pandora’s box’. Fair enough.

The current appetite for a new communal census comes after Rezistans ek Alternativ inadvertently let this particular genie out of the bottle after it went to the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) against the State forcing election candidates to specify their ethnicity when filling out their election papers. The UNHRC found it ridiculous that the electoral system was still being run on a census dating back to 1972 and, in 2012, gave the State a choice: either get rid of the Best Loser System or reintroduce a communal census to update it and allow the electoral system to function properly. Since then, those calling for reintroducing it have argued that it will provide the crucial data needed to identify disadvantaged ethnic groups – such as in prisons or in employment, for example.

It is this second plank of the argument that the State, and those parties standing against it, seem ill-placed to reject out of hand. Why shouldn’t statistics culled out of an ethnic census be used in that way? That was what the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination pointed out as well, putting our attorney general on the spot. Instead, he lost his temper and made a scene before subsequently apologising. Some, of course, will not want such statistics because they want to maintain the status quo – and keeping a veil of silence and ignorance about ethnic representation in employment, particularly public sector employment, or prisons is a good way of going about it. Others are afraid that such classifications will only reinforce ethnic divisions. Fair enough.

But rejecting the identity politics of ethnicity in this selective way is a bit disingenuous, particularly when other forms of identity politics are being fanned in precisely the same manner. As we speak, census data are being used to keep gender statistics on everything from employment to the prison population. The State is boasting about 40 per cent of all senior positions in the public sector going to women. A recent circular from the financial secretary is mandating government bodies and departments to track the gender impact of their policies. Obviously, this form-over-substance species of identity politics is nonsense. Having more women making it to the creamy layer of the civil service has had no discernible impact – good or bad – on the public services. And there is no real evidence that having more women politicians actually benefits women generally. Just take the most consequential and progressive piece of legislation benefitting women in recent years – the partial decriminalisation of abortion in 2012 – as an example. Breaking down the voting pattern on the bill by gender shows that, at the time, although 75 per cent of male legislators voted in favour of it, only 61.5 per cent of female MPs did so. In other words, female MPs were actually less willing to vote in a bill that so obviously benefitted women voters. Nevertheless, the feminist dogma still holds sway, and now the government is even proposing to impose a 1/3^rd quota for women in elections! The current clamour over an ethnic census also has the same flavour, obsessed by numbers instead of policy.

If the government can encourage – even revel – in the quantity over quality assumptions of identity politics when it comes to gender, it looks quite awkward indeed when it denies ethnic identity politics that same privilege. Identity politics is a hydra; you cannot keep feeding one head – hoping to extract political capital – without another inevitably popping up claiming its share too.

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