Higher thresholds, zero prosecution: carte blanche on election spending
As Louis Galea prepares to make his final bow, will he set the ball rolling on campaign finance reform?
Matthew Vella Last year, the unelected MEP candidates Edward Demicoli, Frank Portelli, and Sharon Ellul Bonici admitted to having exceeded the limit on electoral spending by tens of thousands of euros.
Demicoli and Portelli took an oath before a magistrate, breaking with a hypocritical tradition of false declarations of spending below the €18,635 legal limit (the limit in general elections is €1,400 for each district).
But the Electoral Commission never took any action, as it is bound to by law. Now the Speaker of the House is set to discuss a request from Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and Labour leader Joseph Muscat, urging the Select Committee to discuss and revise regulations on electoral expenditure and “make clear and unambiguous recommendations for changes to the relative regulations that would further strengthen the transparency of the electoral process whilst ensuring that candidates have the liberty and the possibility to convey their messages to their electorate in a realistic and effective manner.”
Louis Galea’s final act in parliament before taking up his seat in the European Court of Auditors may be to recommend higher electoral spending thresholds in his ‘secret’ meetings with MPs from both sides of the House (the select committee “on the strengthening of democracy” holds its sessions in camera: hardly fitting for its self-styled mission).
And the Electoral Commission? This toothless cabal of party appointees that is more preoccupied with gerrymandering than upholding electoral law, has refused to take any action on candidates who overspent their electoral spending limits.
But are Demicoli, Portelli and Ellul Bonici simply unashamed lawbreakers? Or did they courageously test the mettle of the Electoral Commission in the name of political honesty... or were they just confident that a commission made up of eight members appointed by the PN and the PL would not prosecute them?
So it seems hard to reprimand them for having effectively catalysed the process to have, soon enough, realistic spending limits for electoral candidates. Indeed, by their action – illegal though it was – they put to shame the big spenders and elected candidates (John Attard Montalto, Louis Grech, Edward Scicluna, Simon Busuttil and David Casa) who declared their expenses to be within the legal limit, without presenting receipts or taking the oath when declaring their expenses.
Candidate Georg Sapiano described this ethical dilemma correctly: prospective lawmakers should challenge bad laws, but then again could they be so cavalier about taking an oath? “What I witnessed in the last election was a free for all in which many behaved as if there was no law at all, and then promptly took an oath saying that they had observed it,” Sapiano had said.
So who are the real ‘culprits’ in this saga of unabashed spending? Soon enough, it will be the entire political class.
As the anti-heroes who precipitated, in a topsy-turvy kind of way, the start of parliamentary talks on electoral spending, Demicoli, Portelli and Ellul Bonici are guilty of having ignored the spending limits at the outset of their campaign. As candidates they put in great financial store to build up formidable campaign machines for the election. In the end they failed to get elected and, perhaps without fearing the consequences of breaking the law, put their hands up, pleaded guilty, and resumed their non-electioneering lives. They must have known that the electoral commission would not even bother fulfilling its role and duty.
The yea-sayers in the electoral commission took a back seat in the entire saga: although the candidates admitted breaking the law, there has been no investigation of all candidates’ expenditure by either the Commission or the police. Attorney General Silvio Camilleri said last July that his “office will take such action as may fall within its competence as circumstances and the law dictate” and yet, no action has been taken. In the UK, the Commons’ expenses saga led to resignations from some 21 politicians, 350 MPs repaying £1 million back to the exchequer, and four MPs facing criminal charges.
Louis Galea says it is not the function of the Speaker to ask the Electoral Commission to press charges before conducting any review of the electoral expenditure law.
Now Gonzi and Muscat want their MPs in the select committee to bring these spending limits to realistic limits. This does not necessarily mean that the 2009 candidates will be let off the hook, which still leaves the electoral commission guilty of failing to take action and upholding the law it is supposed to safeguard.
But it leaves a gaping hole as to how politicians and political parties are being funded. It leaves taxpaying voters with no answers as to who funds the parties, and whether the parties are indebted to major industrialists, property developers, and conglomerates.
The question is: will the stage be set for an entire whitewash?
Malta’s electoral law lacks the necessary safeguards and disclosure requirements to make it a 21st century democracy. Political parties do not declare the origin of their funds; the electoral commission does not prosecute lawbreakers; and voters do not have substantial public access to information on financial declarations. Only independent political candidates and small parties abide by the legal limit on spending. The mainstream parties are allowed to exploit this legal vacuum.
The delicious irony that Galea, a political grandee who knows how patronage influences democracy, sets the ball rolling on campaign finance reform would make his exit from Maltese political life even more momentous. True reform, one that allows voters to trace the money seamlessly from donor to recipient, will lead to greater transparency and more democracy. And to some political carnage.
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