Updated - Adds Labour reactions - Opposition leader Simon Busuttil this evening warned of court action over discrimination if the Labour Party continued to hold on to state-owned properties it used as its clubs, while the party funding law banned state funding of political parties.
Speaking in Parliament, Dr Busuttil said the Opposition was in favour of legislation to regulate funding of political parties.
Political parties were crucial in a democracy and therefore it needed to be ensured that they could function well.
Having a party funding law reduced the risk of the political parties being reliant on large donors and being bribed by them.
But the PN was also strongly against discrimination in the financing of the political parties. It wanted a level playing field.
The law itself should not discriminate between the political parties.
While the PN felt the time had come to consider state funding of the political parties, Labour was against. The Party Funding Bill specifically banned public (state) funding of the political parties.
But, Dr Busuttil said, this was a government built on lies. While it was legislating that there should be no state funding to the political parties, the Labour Party was already being funded by the state.
For years it had been making use of 22 properties stolen from the state and another six stolen from private owners. It was thus raking in millions from the state, while legislating against state funding of political parties.
The public or private properties being used by the PL included its clubs at Attard, Birzebbuga, Floriana, Kirkop, Msida, Paola, Rabat, Victoria (Gozo), Sta Lucija, Sta Venera, Siggiewi and Qormi.
The former (PN) government had taken action against abuse where it could. For example, after the PL left Australia Hall in a state of abandon, in violation of the terms of its contract, the then government took it to court. But as soon as Labour won the general election it dropped this court case in a manifest conflict of interest by by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat vs PL leader Joseph Muscat.
At Siggiewi, once the contract term expired, the former government took over the property from the PL and handed it to the local council for use as a social centre.
The PL never did the gentlemanly thing by returning the properties it stole. For some of them it was paying as much, if not less, than paid by tenants in social housing.
The point at issue was that, because of this theft of properties, there was an uneven playing field between the PL and the PN. The PN was in financial straits because it had not stolen public properties, nor did it want to.
If the law was to state that there could not be state funding, then no state funding, in whatever shape or form should be allowed. The PL, therefore, should return the properties it had taken from the people and private families.
If the PL retained those properties – amounting to state funding – then state funding should be provided for everyone.
The PN did not need the state to tackle its financial problems. It was not expecting taxpayers’ money, and anybody who claimed otherwise was lying.
What it was expecting was for the PL to return the properties it stole. And it expected a level playing field.
If the PL decided to hold on to its 'stolen' property, the political parties should every year be required to file a declaration of the public properties they held and the income they made from them. Then measures should be taken to restore the balance between the political parties.
It was only logical that once the new law itself laid down that the parties had to declare the donations they received from the public, they should also declare what they got from the state. Could anything be more fair than this?
The basic principle was that as a party funding law was introduced, the political parties should leave from the same point.
The PN would move an amendment in this sense. If the PL kept its clubs and the government rejected this amendment, the law would be creating discrimination and the PN would take all measures available in terms of the Constitution and human rights legislation, including going to court.
He hoped this stage would not be reached, Dr Busuttil said.
LABOUR REACTION
Labour MP Carmelo Abela and Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon said the PN should also speak about how it acquired some of its own clubs.
Dr Falzon said some calls for tender were tailor made to favour the PN.
Mr Abela, going into specifics, said the PN had applied to take over a property in Ta’ Xbiex while there was a Nationalist government. Its bid was for a rent of Lm100 per annum. A private individual submitted a bid for Lm1,000. Then somehow, the tender process was quashed. Later, a fresh call was made. The bidders were the PN and the PL women’s section and the PN was awarded the property.
At Sta Lucija, the PN applied for a property adjacent to the football pitch. The call for tenders specified that the property could not be used for residential or commercial reasons. There were two bidders. A private bid was higher than the PN’s but eventually the PN got the property.
The Paola PN club was also owned by the government. When the lease was about to expire, the Health Department applied to take over the property in order to extend the health centre. But the PN, assisted by the government, held on to it and the lease was renewed.
Not the same happened at Siggiewi when the lease of the PL club expired. In that case, the government insisted on re-taking possession of that property.
Mr Abela said the PL clubs had always paid their rents and they were accepted. He also pointed out that it was the PN government which excluded the political parties in the rent reform it carried out.
MINISTER: PL HAS NOT STOLEN ANYTHING
Justice Minister Owen Bonnici denied that the Labour Party had stolen anything.
The PL, he said, had 54 clubs, of which 26 were its own property, including the Rabat property, which was bought from the owners.
Twenty properties were rented from the private owners and eight were rented from the government. If renting from the government amounted to theft, the PN too was a thief.
The crucial point, Dr Bonnici said, was not the requisition law. That law was no longer being used and no properties had been requisitioned since the 1990s.
There had been circumstances where requisitioned properties were handed to other persons, and these persons paid the rent to the original owners. The law laid down the ‘fair rent’. When the landlord accepted the rent, a contract of rent was deemed to exist.
Not all the properties rented to the PL came from requisition. In Attard, for example, the PL had rented the property from a Labour supporter. In Qormi, the property was also rented directly from a private owner. Then his children, upon inheritance, did not want to accept the rent, but they had accepted the inheritance. The PL always respected the law and offered a fair rent. They refused it. Now if the new landlords wanted to go to court, it was up to them and the party would accept the decision.
True, some rents, in general, were low. The PN government in 2008 had brought in a reform which raised the rents, but it was that government which specifically excluded the clubs – including band clubs,sports, social and political clubs, because of their social function.
A court last year confirmed that the clubs had a social function.
Did Dr Busuttil now want the protection for such clubs lifted? If not, Labour should not be called a thief.
RENTS REVISED
Dr Bonnici said that despite this, the landlords should get a fair return. Therefore, it was the present government, through a legal notice last year, which had raised the rents charged for clubs by 10 per cent per year for three years and by 5% for seven subsequent years.
It was also laid down that 5% of revenue from commercial activities on the premises, excluding fund-raising for philanthropic activities, had to be paid to the landlords.
The people were free to compare what the PL and the PN had done.
The government, he said, was holding further discussions and would continue to legislate on fair rent to address long standing problems across the property sector.
On state funding of political parties, Dr Bonnici said this law was the start of a process. First the political parties had to set their house in order so that taxpayers could be satisfied that any public funds which went to the parties were used well.