Party funding - planning parliamentary robbery

This has been a week rich in potentially expensive sick humour. The political class, under critical calls to bare all regarding party funding, promptly came out with a slick reply - let's pass a law to provide for party funding by the Exchequer. Meaning by the taxpayer.

The law, if a bill is presented, as the Prime Minister threatened, will require approval by a majority of sitting MPs. It is likely to get an absolute of absolutes majorities, with rare unanimity. It is unlikely that a referendum will be held before the law is passed, or afterwards, to let the people ratify or nullify it.

Do taxpayers want to contribute to fund the political parties? I don't. Both as one of the thousands who have their little bit deducted at source to go into the public kitty, and as a former politician. I contested six elections, at a time when the party wheels were essentially greased by volunteers and small donations from the faithful.

I was elected in five of them, without spending more than the odd one hundred liri in my campaign. I made it clear every time I contested that I would say "Thank you, but no thank you" to offers of contributions. And so I did.

As did many other candidates, who were elected on the strength of their grit in knocking on doors, meeting people, explaining the party line and comparing alternative proposals. It is only in the past two decades or so that party and individual electioneering has become such an expensive business.

The law which regulates personal spending by candidates during the election campaign is rarely honoured, making one wonder how candidates could swear - formally and in all moral honesty - not to have spent more than a few hundred liri.

In yesteryear party spending was regulated by necessity: you don't have it, you don't spend it. To stand up and address the masses, you required someone to lend you a truck, and a table. The party provided the microphone and accompanying loudspeakers. The party line provided the lure, the pull, the attraction.

Moving on to publicity by television, to appear on a programme you simply needed to be selected by your party. The text and delivery, sense of dress, facial expression and such small big things were up to you.

Don't scowl like a spoiler; don't grin and grin like an idiot; wear pastel-coloured shirts; comb your hair but don't slick it with cream; don't interrupt your opponent; don't tear him to pieces; only make mincemeat of his/her arguments.

It was all so simple and uncomplicated. And so inexpensive. It was only when political parties started going American that their finances began to glimpse red. They couldn't even kiss babies and polish behinds for free: bread and butter moves began to cost more than rich cake.

Moving on to set up party television stations compounded the cost and contributed to the red accounts that became the political party's occupational hazard.

Imbalances have to be remedied. Somebody has to cough up. That somebody became, essentially, the business class.

The game really began in earnest in the early Eighties. A few hand-chosen Nationalists would buttonhole business people, telling them that freedom had to be restored, and that would cost a lot, my goodness what a lot.

Meetings were arranged for business people to meet the party elders, and commit. Labour received business donations, mostly of the small type. In time, it learned the rounds much better.

Around a year ago word got around that the Eighties style of the Nationalists was being emulated, albeit more slickly, by Labour. Specified business groups were asked around, not by the leadership but by surrogate sources. It would be suggested to them how much they were good for.

I heard some marvellous names mentioned among those who agreed to dip into their deep pockets. Possibly, they were relieved that they had not been requested to dip as much as they had become accustomed to do for the Nationalists.

I also heard of other names who felt like saying, 'A plague on both your houses', but were dissuaded by more astute partners.

Meanwhile, the modern-day Nationalists were not merely chewing the cud. No lotus-eaters they, their drumming up of funds was less strident than hitherto, but if anything more incessant.

The game has nothing to do with any party official going out for a break on a businessman's yacht, or for a private dinner, or for contractors to accompany MPs on semi-official visits, or whatever. That is as transparent as can be, wherever one boards a boat or a plane, wherever one goes for a public or private dinner (rather oddly, rarely lunch).

The obscure part of the game is how much donations the parties were raking in from the business community. Moralistic-sounding claims that parties take a little from the multitude are true - in themselves.

They only tell part of the story. They do not exclude, much less reveal, how much is raised from business people.

That is what democrats would like to know. It is not a matter of the parties publishing their accounts, although even here the big two do not have the decency or sense to do it properly. They play it like little children - show me yours and I'll show you mine; or - let's do it together, one, two, and three and wheee!

That or the other party, which really does not mind publishing its accounts, should and could do so without waiting for opponents to do the same.

Thing is, parties are not manned by little children. They know well enough that hefty donations do not go through the books. Publishing party accounts will not tell the people how much the parties are receiving in donations.

It is significant that, when they went through the motions of making an effort to regulate donations through revelation, they could not agree on a basic factor - how much to reveal. Donations over Lm5,000, said the MLP. No, donations over Lm20,000 said the PN. So said the 1995 Galdes report.

Who's kidding whom? Whatever the size of the capping, it is wrong. It leaves the door open for the slick operators who carry out this task to find easy ways out. A cap on a company? A group? An individual? How many individuals are there in a business family? How many companies form a group?

In banking we talk about connected accounts, very important for bank inspections to arrive at the extent of a bank's exposure towards an identifiable entity.

In the banking upheavals of the early Seventies it was remarkable how much resistance certain bank operators and a number of their main clients argued against the concept of connected accounts.

How would the concept be applied towards business donations to the political class? Why depend on it, anyway? The simple issue is that both the MLP and the PN were wrong in what they told Tony Galdes, God bless his soul. The size of the capping should not be allowed to become an issue.

There should be no capping whatsoever. None. Any donation should be listed, and be matched by a receipt.

If business donors are inhibited from giving funds to political parties because their name would become public, tough luck for the party that loses out on their donation. It would show that business donors feel they have something to hide. Those who have nothing to be apprehensive about should not mind baring all.

The business community has mixed feelings, or so it would appear from what its representatives are telling the media. The shrewdest among those willing to express an opinion observed that revealing all would not make much difference to business people who, anyway, donate to both major parties.

Shrewd, at the same time confirmation of the view that businesses tend to donate, at best, as a precautionary investment, to be on the good books of the political class as a whole.

If there are business people honest enough to donate only to the party they believe in, they should be lauded, not scolded. They are, to broaden the meaning of an important word, honest.

However the business class reacts to any legal measure to make baring all compulsory, the issue should remain unrelated to the barefaced proposal to make it compulsory on the taxpayer to fund the political parties, in whatever part. Taxpayers have their individual political opinions.

They are free to back them with donations to whichever political grouping they believe in. That is how democracy works. It is not democratic to force taxpayers to fund the political class as a whole.

That is not to belittle the importance of political parties in a democracy. Because of strength in unity, of the need to organise properly, of the wisdom of pooling ideas and letting them bubble forth those that convince most individuals, organisation along party lines is a very useful democratic tool.

It identifies groups who back a common set of values. Differing parties offer the opportunity for democratic choice.

Let there be as many parties as dynamic leaders can muster. But let them travel on their own energy pack. That energy pack nowadays costs money - true. But, if the political parties are obliged to reveal the sources of their funding, and if it becomes clear that business people are ignoring the small fry, there should be a democratic reaction in the latter's favour.

The ploy opened up so suddenly last week should not be allowed to fool anyone. The political class has no right to impose itself on taxpayers by making them fund it. Any such law, without at least a test of public opinion through a referendum, would be parliamentary robbery.

Robbing thousands and thousands of Peters to pay a handful of political Pauls.