Politics is about doing. Politics is about making decisions, delivering change. Until 2013, Malta was one of the few countries that did not have a regulatory system on political party registration and financing. Greco, the anti-corruption entity within the Council of Europe, had issued report after report condemning in the harshest of tones the Maltese authorities for failure to act.

Labour was elected with the promise of implementing this regulatory framework and that is what we did within months of being elected.

And we did that following a full consultation process whereby political parties and also Greco were kept completely in the loop about the details of the law.

By means of Act XXIV of 2015, called the Financing of Political Parties Act (Chapter 544 of the Laws of Malta), Malta turned over a new leaf. For the first time, we had a piece of legislation aimed at regulating the functioning and financing, of political parties. The law entered into force on January 1, 2016.

Greco expressed itself on the new legislation various times through periodical reviews.

The European anti-corruption body spoke in very positive terms about the new law and, by December 2015, Malta was struck off the “Greco blacklist”.

At the same time, it invited the government to keep doing more to improve existing frameworks and, of course, we are always ready to keep the conversation going.

Politics is about making decisions, acting upon the need to change things and about delivering reforms. Politics is not about cheap words and empty rhetoric.

The way Simon Busuttil tackled the issue of party financing is a textbook case of what a politician should not do

The way Simon Busuttil tackled the issue of party financing is a textbook case of what a politician should not do.

Let us forget for an instant that his own party, when in government, resisted tooth and nail for a whole 25 years the need of having a law regulating party financing.

Let us forget for an instant the ugly scenes on camera of leading businessmen holidaying with various Nationalist Party secretary generals. Let us forget for an instant donations to the tune of a quarter of a million euros done by certain entrepreneurs within days of the signing off of the scandalous Qormi land transfer.

Let us focus instead of what Busuttil did on the matter since his election of leader of the Opposition.

During the consultation stage and even during the legislative stage, Busuttil stressed the need of having strong party financing legislation. He even criticised the government for proposing that the limit of acceptable donations by parties should be set at €40,000, claiming it should be lowered to €20,000.

Eventually, in a spirit of compromise, we set the limit of acceptable donations to €25,000.

After a while, we found out that Busuttil was crafting his way around the parties financing law by devising a secretive ċedoli scheme, whereby secret donors were lending money to the PN without any hint of transparency in the process.

All this ran counter to the spirit of the parties financing law that demanded that details relating to sizeable donations be publicised for the sake of transparency.

Then, paygate erupted.

In an extraordinary twist of events, we found out that Busuttil had been requesting donations – well in excess of the amount permissible by law – from the db Group to finance the wages of two top officials within PN.

What’s worse, he devised a plan whereby those donations were masked under the titled of “commercial relations” with the PN media companies.

The db Group, on their part, said there was no commercial relation at all. It was all a scam to mask a direct and clear donation to the PN’s coffers.

From then on, all that Busuttil could do was to lie through his teeth. He even went as far as to say that the law on party financing does not apply to a commercial company owned by a political party. This is an outright lie.

The definition of ‘donation’ under Chapter 544 reads as follows: “any benefit received in furtherance of the activities or functions of a political party, by or on behalf of a political party, by a member of a political party, a candidate or by any organisation, whether corporate or otherwise, in which the political party, directly or indirectly exercises effective management and control...”

Greco certainly would have strongly protested had we drafted the law in any other way as it would have left a loophole large as a mountain through which fraudulent minds like Busuttil would try to wriggle through.

We are now being told that the donations over the years by the db Group amounted to some half a million euros. If Busuttil believes he is a paladin of honest politics, then he should really get a reality check.

We are also being told that the PN is raising a raft of procedural pleas in front of the Electoral Commission to stultify the investigation the commission is in duty bound to undertake.

People are asking burning questions. Busuttil has managed to spectacularly destroy and annihilate any shred of credibility on issues of good governance.

People read through people. People tell a tree by the fruit it bears.

owen.bonnici@gov.mt

Owen Bonnici is Minister for Justice, Culture and Local Government.