Fund-raising activities by political parties

I refer to The Times editorial (December 18) and to the report in different media that recent fund-raising activities by the Nationalist and Labour parties has netted them well over €620,000 between them.

The editorial rightly referred to "proper regulations aimed at promoting openness and transparency in the financing of political parties" as essential to the proper functioning of democratic systems.

As I pointed out in an earlier article I wrote for The Times, public collections in Malta are regulated by the Public Collections Act.

However, enrolment with the undersigned as Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations dispenses them from the requirement to seek a licence from the police to hold such collections as is required by that law.

The present situation is that "bona fide political parties" are specifically exempted from the requirements of the Public Collections Act according to article 2.1(c) and that, to date, none of the parties in Malta has enrolled as a voluntary organisation notwithstanding that they qualify for that purpose according to the Voluntary Organisations Act (2007). This means that their fund-raising activities are unregulated by special public laws and they are accountable to no specialised external regulatory authority for how they conduct the activities and use the funds collected.

Evidently, as commissioner, in the absence of any specific legislation on party funding, I would dearly like to see the parties apply for enrolment to manifest their willingness to conform to the criteria of openness and transparency referred to above because they would have to submit their audited accounts to the commissioner for public availability.

However, to be fair, this is not a problem with the parties only, it is true also with regard to other entities that qualify as voluntary organisations, including the vast array of small and unknown Church organisations that, in violation of the law, are receiving large sums of money as benefits from the government without being made publicly accountable either.