Alex Borg says surge in donations crashed PN's podcast crowdfunding site

Updated Wednesday 10.02am

PN leader Alex Borg thanked supporters on Wednesday for their response to the launch of a crowdfunding campaign, saying the system had briefly crashed because it could not keep up with donations.

"Just over €1,000 were raised within the first few moments and the system could not keep up in those initial minutes," he said. He urged those who had been unable to donate to try again during the day.

This, he said in a Facebook post, was a symbol of the hope that the Nationalist Party was instilling. A Nationalist Party podcast is the first project to be financed by the project.

The party says it is aiming to raise €15,000 to launch the podcast, which Borg had promised during his leadership campaign. By 11.30am on Wednesday, it had raised just over €3,000 from more than 130 donations. 

In a statement, the PN said the ‘TAMA’ crowdfunding initiative “offers the opportunity for anyone who wants to be part of the Partit Nazzjonalista’s journey to build a new country together to do so”.

The first project to receive funding will be “the PN’s first ever podcast and a project through which people’s stories will meet ideas, so that together we can turn small acts into great change”.

Launching the crowdfunding campaign in a video posted to social media on Tuesday, Borg emphasised that change was not driven by one person, but instead by a group of people sharing the same goal.

The PN's finances have been under scrutiny for years as it continuously fails to submit and publish its annual audited financial statement and donation reports to the Electoral Office, despite a legal requirement to do so.

Its CEO Sabine Agius Cabourdin insists the PN will finally publish its accounts by December 15, as promised by Borg.