Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and Labour leader Joseph Muscat yesterday wrote a joint letter to the Speaker urging the Select Committee on constitutional change to discuss and revise regulations on electoral expenditure.
The leaders of the two main political parties said that amendments should ensure candidates were able to get their electoral message across in a way that was effective and realistic. They added that the rules must be clear, transparent and not allow grounds for ambiguity or interpretation.
The letter comes after several articles appeared in The Sunday Times seeking to establish whether candidates in the June 6 European Parliament election stuck to the current expenditure limit of €18,635.
Some candidates published their expenses before the election, while two unsuccessful Nationalist candidates, Edward Demicoli and Frank Portelli, admitted before a magistrate that they exceeded the legal limit - basing their declaration on their interpretation of the law, which states that "all money" provided by "any person" other than the candidate, for "any expenses incurred" for the campaign must be taken into account.
However, last Friday all five elected MEPs - John Attard Montalto, Louis Grech, Edward Scicluna, Simon Busuttil and David Casa - declared that their campaign expenses were within the legal limit.
Dr Busuttil justified the stand, saying the law was "full of ambiguities and open to different interpretations" and that "it does not even give a cut-off date from when expenses should be calculated".
Yesterday, unsuccessful PN candidate Roberta Metsola Tedesco Triccas backed the position taken by the MEPs.
Dr Metsola Tedesco Triccas announced that although her total campaign expenditure was €36,104, she was only declaring €18,408 to the Electoral Commission because, according to her interpretation of the law, the spending limit only applies from the date of her official nomination as a candidate - in her case, May 4.
However, Mr Demicoli, who declared his total campaign expenditure at €52,000, yesterday criticised the MEPs, saying they had descended into Orwellian doublespeak.
"When I took my oath, I spoke in the universal language of frankness. I said I broke the law. I said this because I believe the people wanted me to say it all and not just the part that saved my hide.
"We were candidates when we launched our campaigns in January, we were candidates when last September we were paraded by our party on the stage in a mass meeting, we were candidates when we were knocking on people's doors in the first six months of the year canvassing for their votes.
"I am disappointed that my MEPs have decided to take this course of action. For me, we had a moral obligation to tell the truth," Mr Demicoli said.
When contacted, former Chief Justice Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici said it was now up to Attorney General Silvio Camilleri to determine whether the law had been broken or not.
"Everything hinges on the Attorney General in this case.
The considerations are not only legal, but also political. If the law was not observed, what he determines may even lead to the elected MEPs losing their seat - depending on the gravity of the offence, of course.
"We have to wait and see what the Attorney General will say when all the declarations are made public and the investigations are held," Prof. Mifsud Bonnici said.
When contacted, however, Dr Camilleri was non-committal on whether the campaign expenditure of European Parliament candidates would be investigated or if court proceedings would be initiated.
Referring to the judicial protest against others' expenditure filed by two EP candidates earlier this month, Dr Camilleri would only say that his "office will take such action as may fall within its competence as circumstances and the law dictate".
The Parliamentary Select Committee was set up as a result of a parliamentary resolution on July 16, 2008, and is made up of representatives from the two parties.
However, no developments to the electoral law have been announced since its inception and it has only met once in the past nine months.
Six EP candidates - Alan Deidun, Maria Camilleri, Rudolph Cini, Steve Borg, Claudette Abela Baldacchino and Christian Zammit - declared they were within the limit.
cmuscat@timesofmalta.com