Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/874823
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER 2017 15 Interview Newly elected AD-Green Party chairperson CARMEL CACOPARDO is outspoken on the need for the party to pull its socks up and upgrade its structures to the highest level of political engagement... without losing sight of 'ethical pluralism' in the Premier League financial assistance from business interests. This surely creates a financial disadvantage, to add to the dependence on other media... Yes. One of the issues we are discussing at the moment is a more robust presence on the so- cial media. We are discussing the most effective way of utilising this medium, and we have plans in the pipeline... we haven't been idle in the past three months, you know: we have been planning, and cost- ing, and seeing where to get the finance from... we have small sources of revenue, people who donate small amounts... obvious- ly, that has to increase. One of the things I tell my col- leagues is that we cannot play in the Premier League, when we are equipped as a fourth divi- sion team. We need to upgrade ourselves at all levels. If our plan is implemented as we wish it to be, there will be more people in- volved, and this will generate even more interest, and possibly more help at different levels. Let's talk about the last election. Along with PD, AD was invited to form a coalition with the PN. It refused. Some saw this as possibly the last chance for AD to finally elect an MP of its own. Do you regret that choice now? Obviously, we could have played the double game, and got elected. But when we met Simon Busut- til, we told him: prior to discuss- ing the issues of the coalition, we need clarification of a number of issues. The PN speaks of 'good governance', but then practises the opposite. We spoke about Mario de Marco's links with the Debono hotel business; we spoke about Beppe Fenech Adami's involvement with Capital One; we spoke about Claudio Grech's declaration that he was not aware of ever having met [pardoned oil trader] George Farrugia... we spoke about the situation involv- ing Tony Bezzina and an ODZ villa... There was also the issue of the so-called 'false declarations' re- garding the [DB Group] party financing issue. No single one of those issues would have been a reason not to discuss the coa- lition further. But a clarification was necessary. The PN did not offer any explanation. Parallel to that request, we insisted that the format of the coalition had to be such that it respected its con- stituent parts. We did not want to end up in a situation where the coalition was represented by candidates who are fascists, homophobes or racists. We pro- posed a structure – which we published at a later stage – which would have ensured that the po- litical programme, and the candi- dates representing the coalition, would have been approved by the coalition... so as to ensure that we would not end up with what ac- tually happened. Those were the reasons why [no agreement was reached]. In addition to the fact that it was very late in the day. We were ready to speak three months before, in February... There is however an irony: since its inception, AD has always spoken about the need to move towards multi-party representation... now, we have multi-party representation without AD... In principle, we are and have always been in favour of coali- tions. But not at all costs. In fact, we drafted a basic political pro- gramme in which we omitted certain issues on the basis that, though we were in favour, we knew that the others were not... For example? We didn't mention hunting, not to create unnecessary friction. At the end of the day, the hunting issue – for the immediate future, at least – is defined within the parameters of the referendum re- sult. In the long term, we will have to see. But the point is that we made it clear, at all times, that we would only be in favour of a coali- tion on the basis of an agreed po- litical programme. We were not, and are never going to be, in fa- vour of a blank cheque coalition. The resulting PN-PD coalition ended up being held together only by a common urge to unseat the Labour government. Is that enough to gel a coalition together? I wrote a number of articles about this on my blog. The format of the coalition was just to ensure the arithmetic addition of votes. That was the only aim... As such, it failed quite drastically. And AD did not fare particularly well either. Is this because the anti-corruption sentiment was misplaced or exaggerated? Or was the concern itself real... but AD failed to capitalise on it? How do you interpret AD's result? AD lost 3,000 votes in the last election. Most of those 3,000 – not all, but most – were persons who had migrated to AD from the PN; and who were impressed by the PN's talk on good govern- ance... and thought, on the basis of what was being said, that the PN had a chance of making it. And their vote could make a dif- ference. That was the reason. Isn't that also a failure on AD's part? Yes, it was. I'm not denying that. We were right in taking the de- cision not to join [the coalition]; but we did not have the organi- sational power to withstand the blows. That is one of the issues we now have to address: to ensure we have a reasonable organisational strength, to be in a position to de- fend our political strength. Carmel Cacopardo (centre) with predecessor Arnold Cassola (left) and AD secretary-general Ralph Cassar