Politics has become an expensive game. Volunteers still play a very important part in it. But, increasingly, a great amount of funding has to be raised to finance the massive outlays made to promote the main parties.

There have always been candidates who splash out lavishly, a few out of their own pockets, others through donations from interested parties- Lino Spiteri

At the individual level too, candidates are spending much more than was the norm not so long ago. I use the word ‘norm’ judiciously, for there have always been candidates who splash out lavishly, a few out of their own pockets, others through donations from interested parties eager to invest in them.

Invest not for their principles or intellectual abilities, but for profit.

If the shenanigans of the past six months have not helped for much, they have at least raised up the agenda the issue of candidates and party financing.

It happened for the wrong reason, to accommodate and pacify the Nationalist MP Franco Debono, who until recently had become a long thorn in the Prime Minister’s side.

He is not that anymore, even if he has been chastised by his party for voting against and bringing down former Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici.

From now on it looks as if he will toe the line. That comes at a price, though, mostly in the form of bringing for discussion some proposals he has been diligently making from soon after he was elected in 2008.

A Private Member’s Bill on political financing is one of them. It is framed in much appeasement. The MP’s original Bill was not considered good enough.

It was sent to a Nationalist Party elder who, I’m told, revised it quite drastically. To an extent that Debono claimed he no longer recognised his original handiwork.

Now, as a result of the appeasement factor, it is that handiwork which is being discussed in hearings chaired by the promoting MP.

It remains to be seen whether the Bill will make it for parliamentary discussion during the remaining life of this legislature.

Nobody knows how long that will be. Left to his own devices the Prime Minister will stay on until close to when his term is due to expire. That will give him time to move towards conclusion a number of initiatives he and his ministers have in hand.

One of them is the new parliament building. The Prime Minister knows that few people agree with him on that Piano elephant.

He probably hopes, though, that once it nears completion and can be seen on its own outside the way it ruins the bastions environment, people will be taken by it.

Above all the Prime Minister needs time because, as he candidly admitted, he and his party are lagging behind Labour in the opinion polls. He is pulling out all the stops, with august help of Austin Gatt, and the beavering away of Simon Busuttil, to change that state of affairs by massaging as many disaffected voters as can be.

If Debono’s Bill makes it to discussion in the House it is not improbable that it will suffer considerable revision at committee stage. The big parties share a common interest to retain financing arrangements that are as loose as can be, despite their rhetoric that they are financed by the common people’s small contributions.

Supporters do respond to their party’s demands and contribute generously. Honest reality says, though, that their contributions are not enough to finance the modern expenditure parties go in for nowadays. That should be no excuse to avoid stringent control of financial contributions, or contributions in kind, if the essence of democracy is to be restored.

To my mind all anonymous contributions should be made illegal. The parties should be legally obliged to maintain a register open for public and media scrutiny of every contribution they receive.

Contributors to a cause should not hide their small or large handout. They should be proud to make it and stand up to be counted. If that provision is enacted I am also inclined not to put a limit on the size of contributions.

The larger the contribution, the more it will attract attention by the media, who will externalise it and let the public draw their conclusions.

I would extend this thinking to contributions to fund candidates. I do not at all agree with Debono that removing anonymity would go against the individual’s right of association. Such a right, as with so many other basic rights and freedoms, should not be bought. Either principle is involved, or we are kidding ourselves?

I am perfectly aware that my line of thinking might discourage contributions. I would welcome that outcome. If candidates and their parties have to make do with reduced financial resources they will have to review the way they do politics. We have become a nation of politics by billboards and sound-bites. Not unlike politics in quite a few so-called democratic countries.

But is that what we want? Do we really wish to allow the kind of politics where money has the loudest voice? Politics should be about principles, belief, plans for action, remedies, attacks on poverty and disadvantage. Not about the ability of the money-raisers in a party to squeeze money out of party faithful and the shoals of big investors I referred to above.

Let’s have a simple Bill about financing politics, one which will ensure that, if money must be part of the game, it is truly honest money that we’re talking about, or money that is open to scrutiny and accountability.