Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/795987
9 maltatoday WEDNESDAY, 8 MARCH 2017 Editorial An unholy alliance MaltaToday, MediaToday Co. Ltd, Vjal ir-Rihan, San Gwann SGN 9016 MANAGING EDITOR: SAVIOUR BALZAN EDITOR: JURGEN BALZAN Tel: (356) 21 382741-3, 21 382745-6 • Fax: (356) 21 385075 Website: www.maltatoday.com.mt E-mail: newsroom@mediatoday.com.mt News that the Nationalist Party's connections with the DB Group ran deeper than Mario de Marco's legal commit- ments with that company might not have surprised everybody equally. For too long now it has been an open secret that politi- cal parties depend on financial support from leading entrepre- neurs; for too long it has been suspected that this unsavoury symbiosis was behind a number of very controversial policies and decisions. DB's claims of having directly financed the salaries of top PN executives – the secretary-gen- eral and the CEO of Medialink, the PN's communications arm – are however a lot more direct than many previously imagined. Perhaps most damning of all is the claim that requests for such donations continued until very recently. PN leader Simon Busuttil has variously stated that he had managed to rid his party of its dependence on big business; now he has admit- ted to receiving at least a small donation from the DB Group... which alleges that it paid a lot more than that, and has even publicly asked for the money to be refunded. On a superficial level, this is embarrassing for a political leader who claims he wants to clean up the country, and offers good governance as his party's main selling-point. But that is a small part of the weighty ramifications. Busuttil's haste in publicly de- nouncing the SMS he received from the CEO of DB Group could, with hindsight, be viewed as reckless and politically unwise. His belated denial of the salaries claim was likewise awkward and incoherent. On one hand he denied the allega- tions, on the other he admitted that all his party's payroll is financed directly by undisclosed donations. It is a messy affair, and politi- cally very sticky for the PN. But to concentrate only on the par- tisan fallout would be to miss the bigger picture. At face value, the contro- versy has exposed, for all to see, the unholy alliance between big parties and big business. Though its existence was long suspected, we now have a much clearer picture of the extent of the rot. From this perspective it ceases to be a Nationalist problem, and becomes a national one. The Prime Minister is unwise to try to make capital out of it: though the links may be differ- ent, the Labour Party is equally enthralled to the same rotten system. It has long been known that big parties struggle to bankroll their costly operations. The two parties employ hundreds, run media empires and organise expensive political campaigns. We're talking millions every year. The money must come from somewhere and it cer- tainly does not come from small donations. But it works both ways. Big businesses depend on parties to survive, too. Malta Develop- ers Association chief Sandro Chetcuti once compared the Nationalist and Labour parties to "two big shops", giving them the opportunity to choose "from whom to buy" the best policies. We now know he wasn't exag- gerating. It's an insurance policy which has served big businesses well for decades. But the effects on the country as a whole have been severe. All the same, it is not an easy problem to solve… especially since the laws, checks and balances needed to ensure greater transparency and ac- countability must be enacted by the two parties themselves, which have a stranglehold on parliament and other state insti- tutions. The party financing law, while a step forward from the free- for-all situation we had before, is imperfect. One major f law is that the Electoral Commission has been appointed as regulator, when the commission is entirely composed of representatives of the two parties it will supposed- ly regulate. The political parties are expected to act as a watch- dog on their own finances. Secondly, the commission does not have the tools and right to investigate and scrutinise the parties' finances. Will the commission investigate the DB donations? Will it fine Labour for failing to be eligible to even register as a party, despite a law which came into force more than 14 months ago? Thirdly, the law has many loopholes and does not cover the commercial entities owned by the parties. Like the broad- casting and electoral laws, it is clearly designed to favour the big parties to the detriment of smaller parties. This once again underlines the need for state funding. The German model is far from per- fect, but it may serve as a useful model for Malta. In Germany, the State and party-membership dues pay for the bulk of the par- ties' finances, while corporate and individual donations cannot make up more than one-third of their income. For this to work in practice, the parties must publish their accounts and be fully open to scrutiny. However, the structural problems do not end with party financing. Maltese MPs are part-timers and depend on private practice. Most MPs have conf licts of interest, especially those who provide services to the private sector. A full time parliament would not only give MPs an opportunity to clean up their act, but also give them the tools to fully focus on legislat- ing. Sunday's revelations could potentially be a watershed mo- ment in Maltese politics, a mini- Tangentopoli... even though it is highly unlikely to rattle a system so heavily skewed in favour of the two parties.