Party telethlons are an inevitable feature of a political landscape devoid of any real control. The alternative, writes Harry Vassallo, is financing by the State
The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), of which Malta forms part, has published its Evaluation Report on Malta on Transparency of Party Funding, a close cousin of its Evaluation Report on Malta on Incriminations.
Corruption, the subject of the second report, is necessarily closely related to power and politics. At whatever level it takes place, it is an abuse of authority granted by law. Political parties are all about power. In Malta they are about near absolute power, since the electoral system is carefully geared to produce a one-party government.
How that one party in particular happens to be financed is a question of major interest to anyone with the most modest of intelligences.
What the reports find is a situation in which political parties are barely defined and suffering hardly any form of control. It was only thanks to the 1987 Constitutional amendments that political parties were mentioned by the law for the first time. For the rest, they crop up in exemptions to recent legislation such as the Data Protection Act, or are catered for in established practices such as exemption from duties on lotteries.
The party becomes the government and with a majority in Parliament makes (or refuses to make) the rules which govern its existence.
The opposition party will not object if it is given the same privileged status as its rival. The whole system has worked swimmingly so far.
As in the case of Constitutional amendments aimed at preserving the status quo, the two political parties responsible have acted on the understanding that they are the country. The two thirds majority in parliament bolsters their faith and they feel entitled to ignore all others. Besides they have that earthy and visceral experience of naked power arising from control of territory. Feudal, medieval and Mediterranean as it may be, it is our reality manifested in dual party clubs in every village, street leaders on every street and intimate intelligence on any citizen accessed the instant it is required.
There is none of the remoteness of power from the grassroots to be found in countries of millions of people; none of the constitutional firewalls developed over the centuries elsewhere to separate the public and the private spheres. Our political parties or at least the major two act in the belief that they are the country and not private entities in relation to the commonwealth just and any other judicial or physical private person.
There is no one to insist on such distinctions. Just as the distinctions between party, government, parliament and the state are blurred beyond recovery in practice, they are also blurred in public perception. The practice no longer offends, because we are not brought up to make such distinctions; much less to be shocked when they are not made by others.
The one distinction that is made is between the PN and the PL. The cultural focus on this one major divide distracts us as to the many others that should be made.
And so this is Christmas... Whatever both parties do is legitimate and fair. If they both compete with philanthropic organizations at Christmastime and with commercial enterprises the rest of the year, who is to complain? If any of us do mutter about it in private at a safe distance from elections, very few express their rancour at the polls. We endorse the system through attendance at 90%+ levels.
That is precisely why reports such as the one by GRECO are necessary. Their recommendations to register every donation to a political party and for greater accountability throughout the process is a stab to the heart of the present system. The great Christmas political money laundering exercise in which it becomes impossible to identify who gave what to whom or even how much would become illegal in its present form no matter how many of us are inclined to accept it as legitimate and fair because “everybody is doing it”.
If the present system of financing political parties does not give rise to corruption it would be some form of miracle. People who participate in the mafia-like trading of influence as a matter of course, who feel untrammelled by Constitutional requirements in the separation of powers or even by the distinction between what is essentially a private operation and public funds and powers, can hardly be expected to be squeamish about returning a favour or two.
The political Christmas fundraising marathons may remain a necessary milking of the economy until it is finally decided to allocate public funds directly to political parties. Meanwhile it remains a giant advertisement of the anti-system and a major source of the widespread preception that we live raped and robbed by all-pervasive corruption.
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