Audited accounts of political parties will be posted online on the website of the electoral commission within a month from the date they are submitted, parliament agreed this morning.
The decision was taken during the committee stage debate on the law of party financing, on the insistence of Opposition MP Claudio Grech. The meeting is still under way.
He argued that clause 30 of the Bill did not oblige the commission to post this documentation online, but only to make it available for public scrutiny and the media.
Mr Grech remarked that once this information would be in the public domain, access to it should be facilitated and the public should not have to go through the ordeal of going to the Commission's offices at Evans Building in Valletta to inspect them.
Mr Grech said parties should be treated like companies whose returns were available online on the MFSA register. He said parliament would be conveying the wrong message if it did not make it mandatory for their audited financial accounts to be available on the interent.
Justice Minister Owen Bonnici pointed out that MPs declaration of assets were not published online but were still being scrutinized by the media. However, following a lengthy debate, the minister agreed to take the Opposition's suggestion onboard and the article was amended.
Earlier Opposition MP Chris Said remarked that the Electoral Commission should not act as the watchdog on party financing, as the Bill was proposing. Dr Said raised concerns that sensitive information could be leaked to both parties which are representing on it.
Dr Said pointed out that there had already been an incident in which a draft copy of an appeal regarding a court decision to award the PN two additional seats had been leaked to the Labour Party from within the commission.
This is not Boniplus...
Tempers flared when Dr Said questioned whether properties which the Labour government had “donated” to the PL in the past should be listed as a source of revenue in the party's annual audited accounts.
Justice Minister Owen Bonnici noted this was not the forum where to raise such the issue, arguing that it should have been raised during the second reading stage.
Nevertheless he sought the advice of the Attorney General who was present. Dr Peter Grech said that such properties could not be considered as a service from a state source.
Dr Said kept insisting, saying that the Bill should still include provisions to cater for these properties.
At one point Dr Bonnici interjected saying “we are drafting laws and not debating on Bondi Plus or Xarabank”.
This prompted an immediate reaction from Dr Said who said that in that case they would not take further part.
“You know Bondi Plus much better due to the contract you gave him [the government's contract to Lou Bondi')]” he said.
It was unacceptable, he added, that the government was trying to ridicule the Opposition for raising this issue. The Pn, he said, was ready to hand back all government properties in its possession if the PL agreed to do so.
At this stage the Justice Minister calmed the situation and clarified he did not want to convey the message that the Opposition was not contributing seriously to the debate.