The Voluntary Loan Scheme announced by the Nationalist Party has created quite a stir. Dispassionate observers have – perfectly reasonably – asked a few questions about how the scheme actually works and how it will pan out. Less dispassionate commentators, sometimes referred to as internet trolls when they populate the comment boards not with their assets but with their barbs, have raised other more ‘political’ questions.
The trolls must be dispatched first, in order to clear the forum for a proper debate, based on facts, not on strings pulled by their puppet masters.
The trolls should perhaps bear in mind that many less-blinkered observers know for a fact that the PN never gave itself a €12 million, nicely gift-wrapped Australia Hall as a ‘coming into power’ present.
They should also give some consideration to the fact that the PN were never revealed to have had their very own ‘fourth floor’, as described by the current Speaker when he was still a Labour big beast, where men in smoke-filled rooms (to use a rather dated image) would engage in cosy deals.
They can be called investments, if you want to look at it from the entrepreneurs’ point of view. These gentlemen would no doubt seek to make hay when the sun eventually rose for them.
The PN never gave itself a €12 million, nicely gift-wrapped Australia Hall as a ‘coming into power’ present
The trolls should also give thought to the fact that from having to resurrect a broken and rapidly becoming insolvent Super One in Dr Alfred Sant’s time, the Labour Party somehow managed to drag itself up by its bootstraps to present to the electorate one of the slickest – and most expensive – campaigns ever seen.
That money had to have come from somewhere, and it wasn’t only from fund-raising marathons, as anyone who can do the math will tell you. The old adage of the piper’s paymaster being the one who calls the tune applies, with bells and whistles on, in scenarios such as the one that is not difficult to imagine.
The trolls having been dispatched, an adult discussion about the scheme can now be embarked upon.
The information made available by the PN, when the scheme was announced and then by means of a flyer that is available to anyone who is interested, makes it clear that this is simply a means by which interested individuals can make a voluntary loan to the party, repayable in 10 years’ time (or earlier if the PN as debtor wishes to) at four per cent per annum payable once yearly. The scheme was developed, we’re told,after a number of individuals approached the party themselves to help out financially.
The transaction, which will be underpinned by a legal contract, is thus fully at arm’s length, which is more than can be said for smoke-filled-room deals. The loan, while giving a decent rate of interest, doesn’t fall within the “too good to be true, so it can’t be” category of investments, either.
The PN don’t have their agents out prospecting for investors, and no commission is payable to anyone who brings in a lender, simply because this is a voluntary scheme which requires anyone who wants to participate to seek out the appropriate PN official and enter into the contract needed.
All of this renders the scheme one that is entirely compliant with the law and, perhaps more importantly, transparent and properly administered.
Frankly, I’d have been astounded had the PN, with the electorate still getting its head around Panamagate, not ensured that they did things in line not only with the letter, but also the spirit of the law.
The PN officials involved and whose names are on the flyer are Alex Perici Calascione, Ann Fenech and individuals such as these, who have professional and personal reputations that must be paramount for them. They simply don’t put their names to dodgy deals and shady backscratching.
Not from where I’m sitting, anyway.