A draft Bill on party financing has been presented to Parliament. The proposed law incorporates various proposals made by Alternattiva Demokratika but it regulates donations to parties and the expenditure limits of individual candidates, without saying anything on party financing.
AD has two strong objections to the proposed law.
The first is that the law entrusts the registration of political parties to the Electoral Commission. The commission is made up of six persons nominated by the Labour Party, six nominated by the Nationalist Party and a chairman nominated by the government.
Any person with a minimum of common sense knows that it would be ridiculous to have the recognition and functioning of a small rival party like AD in the hands of PN and PL nominees. It simply does not make sense. AD is proposing that the regulatory authority for political parties should be the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life together with the Select Parliamentary Committee on Standards for Public Life.
A second objection by AD is that this Bill has been tailor-made to fit the needs and structures of the two established political parties, which have been able to accumulate properties, donations, commercial companies, TV stations and whatnot over the past 100 years or so and employing scores of full-time employees in the process.
However, it totally ignores the structures of a 25-year-old party like AD that has been purposely structured in order to accommodate only voluntary work in order to free ourselves from the clutches of those big developers. These speculators dictate the political agenda of both the PN and the PL and, eventually, of the party in government.
So, for example, while the two big parties spend hundreds of thousands of euros on their electoral campaigns, a party like AD in the recent European election campaign has spent the following: Facebook adverts – €1,000; billboard rental – €1,000; printing and distribution of flyers – €3,280; printing of photos for polling booths – €147.50; printing of cards – €535.16 and hall rentals – €450. This amounts to a total of €6,412.66.
Moreover, we got the following donations in kind: printing 30,000 business card (one donor); e-mail shot to 30,000 households (one donor); some internet adverts in Malta Today (one donor); one small advert on Malta Today print edition (one donor); one small advert in The Malta Independent (one donor); 36-hour online adverts on The Malta Independent (one donor) and printing of 400 posters (one donor).
This means that, unlike the two big parties, we did not spend more than €10,000 on our campaign. Yet, the draft law does not take the structure of a party like ours into consideration and the law has been drawn up with only the PN and the PL structures in mind and smaller parties like ours would have to just adapt to them. This is a veritable case of being lumped with a one-size-fits-all law.
AD would also like to highlight a fact which very often is kept hidden. Since the early 1990s, the Maltese State has financed the PN and PL groups in Parliament to the tune of €100,000 each and every year. In the 2014 Budget this appears in line 5298, under the description of ‘Development of relations with EU and the Mediterranean region by political groupings in Parliament’.
Malta has, since the early 1990s, been giving various other State aid, first through the budget of the Malta-EU Steering and Action and Committee and now through the Ministry for Social Dialogue, to different organisations, such as the Union Ħaddiema Magħqudin, the Chamber for Small and Medium Enterprises – GRTU, the Malta Employers’ Association and the General Workers’ Union which have all been getting €58,200 every year for their work related to European and international activities.
The Bill does not say anything on party financing
Moreover, the Maltese State has also been helping, since the early 1990s, various constituted bodies, such as NGOs, through the possibility of having civil servants seconded to work with such NGOs while the government continues to pay the salaries of these workers.
AD would have no problem in taking up the new administrative and financial obligations being introduced by the draft law if it is treated like all other political parties and constituted bodies.
We want a level playing field and not a law that has been tailor-made and made to fit exclusively the needs of the PN and the PL. Therefore, together with the administrative and financial obligations we are expected to carry, we would also like to have the necessary aid to be able to carry out such obligations.
We do not expect to be ‘punished’ for our due diligence over the past 25 years while the PN and the PL, which have depended on the big money of big speculators, are rewarded for selling their souls.
In the name of justice and a level playing field, we therefore insist that no political party is put at a disadvantage as a result of the proposed law, which should take into consideration the different realities of each existing political party in order to ensure that no political party is discriminated against in a blatant way.
arnoldcassola@gmail.com
http://facebook.com/arnoldcassolaalternattiva
Arnold Cassola is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika.