In 2012, Barack Obama spent $700 million to win re-election. In 2013, Joseph Muscat’s Labour Party declared that it spent $2 million (€1.5 million at the 2013 exchange rate) on its election campaign; the PN declared it spent $2.9 million. A few months later, Angela Merkel won re-election by spending $27 million on her party’s entire campaign.
Which country had the most expensive campaign? If you calculate in terms of sums spent per voter, then the most expensive campaign was Malta’s. By a mile.
Obama spent roughly $5.50 per voter. There are good reasons to think that Labour’s campaign cost much more than it declared, but let’s take its declaration at face value: Labour still outspent Obama. It forked out $6.30 per voter. The more realistic sum declared by the Nationalists – clearly running a much less well-funded campaign than Labour – almost doubled Obama’s spending, with $9 spent per voter.
What about Angela Merkel, at the time every German’s favourite sensible aunt? She spent 40 cents per voter. And it wasn’t even just for her. It covered every one of her party’s candidates up and down the country. (For those who object that the campaign expenses of the Social Democrats should be counted as well, since they were needed to form the next government, total spending still comes to less than $1 per voter.)
Such figures give us some insight into the scandal hogging the limelight this week: the businessman Silvio Debono and whether he’s acquired a massive amount of prime public land, at a sliver of its real value, through fair means or foul.
It’s true that the scandal is about cronyism not campaign donations. It’s about an alleged quid pro quo: whether Debono expects specific favours in return for donations.
So it’s not (or shouldn’t be) a controversy about donations to political parties, as such, which are considered legitimate everywhere in the democratic world. Merkel’s Christian Democrats obtain around a third of their revenues from donations.
Nonetheless, the expense of running a general election campaign should tell us something about the pressure political parties are under to obtain funds. If we find that that pressure is overwhelming, we cannot rest with condemning the system. We must find a realistic alternative to replace it.
So, back to those initial figures. They can all be tweaked. For instance, Obama’s real spending was arguably $1.2 billion, almost double the figure I used, if you include the money raised by the action committees supporting him. That would raise his spending per voter up to $9.50 (but that’s only marginally more than what the PN’s no-frills campaign spent).
As for Germany, its short campaigns may be notoriously inexpensive (constrained by laws and cultural norms) but its political parties are massive organisations that, in a routine year, spend up to $10 per voter on various expenses (with a third of that money coming from public subsidies and another third from party membership).
If you must tweak, however, then you should tweak all the way. Even if Labour’s claimed spending – $2 million – is taken at face value, Labour also acknowledged it had more than 3,200 ‘volunteers’. It’s public knowledge that many of those were handsomely rewarded later out of public funds. And at least some of the outgoing PN government’s last-minute settlements with individual voters should be counted in with the campaign spending, too.
Besides, a third of Obama’s spending went on TV ads. In Malta, the political parties get those for free.
No matter how you slice the figures per voter, Malta outspends the US, where campaigns are notoriously expensive. The spending gap is even more remarkable when you consider the respective size of the Maltese and US economies.
We can argue about whether election campaigns in Malta need to be that expensive. Evidently, economies of scale play a significant role. But these three facts remain. A decent general election campaign costs, in truth, at least an onerous €2.5 million. The political parties do not generally manage to collect all this money before the campaign itself. They need to spend the following five years paying off the balance, running the party organisation, and building up a war chest for the next general election.
In its current form, the system is unsustainable. The political parties are subject to great financial pressures and can therefore be squeezed by unscrupulous donors. But it’s unlikely that the political parties can face more quid pro quo scandals without earning withering contempt from the voters.
The system is on the brink of a legitimation crisis. It is creaking. Its centre cannot hold. What can replace it?
No democracy follows Marlene Farrugia’s recommendation: place all your trust in a single politician or small party to guarantee the honesty of the larger players. Why should Malta be an exception and treat its democracy like a child with a nanny?
The pattern elsewhere is clear. Strong, enforced rules and transparency maximise good behaviour. When it comes to honesty, the record of German and Scandinavian corporations outside their respective countries isn’t admirable. But the rules at home make them behave differently.
German law does not cap business donations to political parties. Nonetheless, German corporations donate with remarkable self-restraint. Perhaps a funding scandal 20 years ago, and its consequences, have something to do with it.
The UK may be famous for its relative probity but, 100 years ago, the British prime minister, Lloyd George, was selling peerages. It’s law, process and a vigilant media that keep the stable relatively clean.
The House of Commons today demands that all MPs register their interests, in real time, as they acquire them: not just properties, salaries, shares and bank accounts, but also major clients. Facilitating access is not frowned upon; hiding what you’re doing is.
A register of members’ interests in our own Parliament would cost us nothing. We should distrust any political party that doesn’t include it in its next electoral programme.
Beyond that, replacing the current system carries costs. Germany’s state subsidies for political parties carry many advantages. Politicians spend far less time courting potential donors. But the system does mean that your taxes support your political adversary.
More importantly, it’s unlikely that Malta can financially afford to subsidise political parties when, at the same time, the major parties continue to compete with promises of tax cuts.
If you’re in favour of state subsidies for political parties, to be consistent you need to be against further tax cuts, if not in favour of a marginal tax hike.
The alternative is to be in favour of replacing relatively big donations with crowdfunding. The figures suggest that’s easily possible.
For example. If the 132,000 PN voters in 2013 (a low proportion by the party’s standards) had each given the party €25, the PN could have run a €3 million campaign. If each of those voters donated a mere €2 per month, the party could collect as much money per year, without any fear or perception of a quid pro quo.
But even crowdfunding comes at a cost (apart from administration). Mobilising small donors isn’t possible without keeping the political temperature high. You can’t rally troops without beating partisan drums.
You can have state subsidies and moderate partisan temperatures. Or, crowdfunding and high partisan temperatures. But to hope for crowdfunding and moderate partisanship is a false piety anywhere.
Each option carries a cost. We can’t take a realistic, hard look at the system without also being lucid about the price we’re prepared to pay.
ranierfsadni@europe.com