The Electoral Commission recently published the statements of accounts of the five political parties for 2018. While the report might not hover at the top of people’s lists of holiday reads, it damn well should. In fact, I’d strongly recommend reading it bit by bit at the beach, taking care to cool off after every page.
I especially have in mind the section that deals with donations. In 2018, the Nationalist Party raised €1.57 million in donations. I’d have thought Labour, which likes to bump up things like the distances swum by Michelle Muscat, was miles ahead. But no, it raised a slender €1.37 million.
As prescribed by the party financing laws, the accounts go into more detail than that. In brief, individual donations are classified into three kinds: those that do not exceed €500 – the sort raised through telethons and such; those that exceed €500 but not €7,000; and those that exceed €7,000. The third kind is where most of the fun is. I shall call them ‘big donations’.
The PN raised €10,320 in big donations by private individuals in 2017 (election year) and €10,100 in 2018. For its part, Labour raised €15,000 in 2017 and – wait for it – €0 in 2018.
You’d be thoroughly stupid to believe a single number of it. Take the Labour Party. It has never been in a sunnier place as a candidate for big donations, for two reasons.
First, the way things are going, it is likely to win the next election, and the one after it, and so on. A party that’s set to be in government for a long time is a tremendous prospect as far as donations go. Every euro (or million) given is a solid and long-term investment. The message won’t be lost on the guys with the fat wallets.
Second, the conditions are perfect for big donations. For one, there’s a lot of cash around. Every time Sophie the sniffer dog discovers a wad of undeclared notes at customs – and she seems to oblige every other day – I can’t help wondering just how much more cash stays local and safely out of reach of canine trouble. As far as I’m aware, neither of the two parties employs sniffer dogs.
When Labour, that’s clearly swimming in money, declares a few thousand euros in big donations in election year, it’s blowing a big raspberry in our faces
Cash is just a symptom, of course. From deckchairs at the Blue Lagoon to citizenship, Malta is going through a mercenary l-aqwa żmien, a golden age of wheeling and dealing. I’m not moralising, I’m just saying. I’m also saying that such machines tend to require regular oiling.
As no doubt does the main player, construction. It doesn’t take much to join the dots. Malta today is the Marbella of Jesús Gil – a rampage of concrete, mega-millions, and certain other things. Directly or otherwise, at the base of every tower crane is a political anchorage which in turn needs to be kept firmly in place. No better way to do that than to keep the party that matters in ample pocket.
So no, suspicious man that I am, I do not believe that Labour got €15,000 in big private donations in 2017 and nothing at all in 2018. Nor do I believe the PN accounts, even if the party appears to be a few cents away from having to sell its organs.
Does it matter? I think it does. But first, an aside. The creative balance sheets could be read as a strong argument for State party financing. Whatever the positions on that one (I’m personally against it, partly because it tends to finance the status quo), the main point here is not that.
Rather, it is the astounding cynicism shown by the two big parties. What we have here is statements of accounts that hide a million times more than they show. When Labour, that’s clearly swimming in money, declares a few thousand euros in big donations in election year, it’s blowing a big raspberry in our faces.
The brazen lies on party financing are a prime example of what a friend of mine privately described to me as the ‘tide of hypomorality’. In plain English it means a growing sense that anything goes, as long as you can get away with it. In this case, both parties know that not a single person in the country will believe them. They also know that not a single person will care. Thus hypomorality.
There’s another thing. The deputies from the two parties populate Parliament, and therefore enact laws. Except the parties they belong to seem to be above those very laws. Party financing is just one example.
Data protection is another. At a time when the most benign of intentions are hobbled by data-protection regimes (I was recently told I couldn’t take a photo of a busy part of the University campus, just in case people’s faces showed), the two parties seem to know exactly who votes how, where, and even at what time on election day.
Billboards are yet another example. Times of Malta reported the other day that campaign billboards that were put up by the Labour Party for the May campaign were still being used, illegally, to generate money for the party – three months after the election. The Planning Authority had issued enforcement notices and they had duly been ignored.
Our parties may be low on donations and poor in spirit, but they certainly aren’t meek. As for their thirst for righteousness, I suggest we change the subject.