Justice Minister Owen Bonnici is already describing a Bill aimed at regulating party financing as a milestone in the island’s political history, even though it has not been made law and put to the test yet. It will be a milestone on paper but it remains to be seen if it will meet the aims for which it has been proposed. The history of party financing control, as well as of transparency and accountability, is littered with examples of irregularity and complete disregard of the rules.
The minister is presenting the Bill as an example of good governance, and so it is, but few would share his unbounded confidence that the law would work in the way he thinks it should.
How can people share the minister’s confidence when, only last month, it was revealed, for instance, that no fewer than 16 Labour MPs had failed to submit their declaration of assets to Parliament as they were bound to do by the deadline set by the Speaker? One Cabinet minister was even reported saying he was unaware that, apart from his ministerial declaration, he had to submit a separate asset declaration to Parliament.
This is unacceptable, as was the overspending by parties and candidates during past elections.
Politicians themselves know the farce the country has been living as regards party financing and, in fact, the justice minister liberally admits it when he said in an opinion piece in The Sunday Times of Malta: “Under previous administrations plenty of lip service was paid (to accountability in accounting records and regulation of donations to parties and candidates’ expenditure) and yet all initiatives were mere eyewash because they were either blocked or shelved by the power holders.”
Failure of past rules is indirectly admitted in the Bill’s ‘objects and reasons’ when it states that it introduces “more effective sanctions against overspending”. It lays down the donation and expenditure thresholds. Parties would also have to submit their records of income and expenditure, a move that helps to encourage accountability.
However, according to the minister, the proposed law states that parties should not accept donations made with the intention of claiming some advantage or benefit in the future. Donors, or, for that matter, parties, are not that naive to make intentions public.
The amounts candidates will be allowed to spend in elections have been raised and MPs can be unseated if they are found to have made false statements. The deterrents sound good on paper but the issue of party financing and spending by candidates at elections is so mired in stories of blatant irregularity that it will take more than promises for people to believe what is being proposed before the country sees how it is all going to work out in practice. There have been so many party financial scandals abroad that it will be unwise for the minister, or his government, to start blowing their trumpet before seeing whether local politicians are prepared to be transparent and accountable.
At least, the Bill steers clear of State financing, something that, correctly, is being shelved for the time being. What ought not to be shelved are the amounts the two main parties owe in arrears for water and electricity. Is this the kind of correctness and accountability the two parties are so fond of talking about?
When the two parties come to debate the Bill in Parliament, they would first have to see how they are going to sound credible to the electorate.