This thorny question has been with us for a very long time. I vividly remember sending a letter to The Times many years ago advocating the prohibition of donations of a certain import to political parties. I took this stand principally as a member of the business community, but also in the light of the appointment of the Galdes Commission by former Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami.

My stand then was that politicians must be permitted to discharge their duties without fear or favour and must be free from any pressure from a donor. My position today is unchanged.

It will be extremely difficult to convince me that somebody who donates thousands of liri (sometimes even tens of thousands of liri) to a political party does so for purely altruistic reasons.

The donation is, in the vast majority of cases, made to "buy" favour with the recipient party or politician.

If we really want to clean up politics and restore people's faith in our political system, an urgent solution to this problem must be found.

I was unaware of the final recommendations of the Galdes Commission. A very recent report in The Times quoted the Leader of the Opposition, as stating that the commission recommended the declaration of all donations in excess of Lm5,000 and the capping of donations at Lm10,000. This proposal, according to Alfred Sant, was acceptable to the Labour Party but not to the Nationalist Party which wanted the limits to be set at Lm10,000 and Lm20,000 respectively. Alternattiva Demokratika had proposed to cap donations at Lm1,000 and to have donations in excess of Lm500 declared.

While the recommendations of the Galdes Commission are indeed an improvement on the present situation, they are still nowhere near enough. As things stand today, parties can and do receive very substantial donations. I know that parties even approach people and companies telling them that they are "expected" to make donations running into thousands of liri! Surely this state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue. It undermines the essence of the independence and transparency of our democratic system.

Why cannot the two main political parties take a cue from AD for a change and adopt their recommendation?

I, of course, do understand that political parties need funding to survive. All Maltese believe in a multi-party democracy so what, for heaven's sake, is the problem with public financing of political parties? The taxpayer's money is already paying for the cost of Parliament and for the cost of governing the country. So what's the big deal in financing parties? Without the survival of political parties we would not have a Parliament, so public financing sounds like a sine qua non.

I fail to understand why such a situation has been allowed for all these years. I hope the Prime Minister, who has taken bold decisions in the past, will make a quick proposal to unblock the apparent stalemate. Dr Sant has, if you like, stuck his neck out and declared that his party is prepared to implement the Galdes report "next week". The Cabinet has also expressed itself in favour, so, surely, an early agreement must be on the cards.

May I finally put across a word of caution?

If we truly wish to effectively cap donations, our legislators will need to take into account the fact that companies forming part of the same group are separate legal entities. Consequently, a donor could defeat the true spirit of the law by donating the maximum permissible amount from each of these companies. Thus, a group made up of 10 companies (and several such groups do exist) could, in this way, legally donate 10 times the maximum amount! The legislators will need to define very clearly and precisely what constitutes a donation as well as the definition of a donor.