While the government’s proposals for party financing were a step in the right direction, Parliament should have to have the courage to go further to strengthen political parties and ensure they would not be bought by a few, Opposition MP Chris Said said this evening.

He was speaking in Parliament during the debate on the bill on party financing.

Dr Said, who is also the Nationalist Party’s general secretary, said the PN agreed with the need for the law but in spite of the scepticism a state financing proposal might raise in some, it was the only way to guarantee that parties were not bought and controlled by a few local or foreign interests.

In arguing that the state should not finance parties, politicians would be sending the wrong message, he said.

He also noted that many parties in Europe enjoyed some form of public funding.

Dr Said referred to a proposal made by the Opposition for the setting up of a working group to study what other countries were doing and propose the adoption of the best state funding rules for Malta.

This, he said, could be done during the summer recess for the necessary amendments to be moved when the House met again keeping to the deadlines given for the law to start being implemented.

He noted that as soon as the PN made its proposal, the government immediately threw out the PN’s genuine proposal saying the party was making it because of its financial problems.

Although it was true that the PN had financial problems and had to take a number of difficult decisions to restructure, Dr Said said the party wanted party financing so that parties would be the voice of the masses.

It was also a proposal which had been made by Labour when in Opposition.

Dr Said noted that the PN was also at a disadvantage because it had to buy most of its property while the Labour Party was making use of a long list of public properties or private property that had been requisitioned and given to the party to make money out of it.

The bill being debated, did not make this illegal and showed that state financing was already in place for the Labour Party. The PL, Dr Said said, had 22 properties owned by the government at ridiculous rates, starting from 3c a day.

PL also had Australia Hall which the Labour Government of 1996-1998 had degraded to give the party better development possibilities. This had exploded the commercial value of the property.

The present government dropped a court case against the party for the government to take back the land because of breach of contract conditions.

Dr Said said Mr Justice Wenzu Mintoff had written in The Malta Independent of October 29, 1997 that the Nationalist government had all the power to reclaim all the lands once this property was allowed to deteriorate.

Dr Said said that the Labour Party argued that the Labour Party had been given Freedom Press in exchange for Australia Hall. The truth, however, was that while Freedom Press and surrounding lands amounted to less than 8,000m2, the PL was given for it €14,069 in cash, buildings in St Andrews on 14,000m2 of land, a factory in Marsa and €3,000 to move.

This was when others were only given cash for expropriated land.

But the biggest scandal was the requisition of six properties in prime sites from the private sector and given to the party. The time had come for the party to return these properties to their owners, said.

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