Last Saturday, The Times carried a long, excuse-loaded interview with PN secretary general Joe Saliba, the man who believes that it’s no big deal for a politician to take a holiday aboard a leading building contractor’s boat.
“We share a common background in the building industry”, he declared. “Of course”, I thought to myself, “how could I have been so foolish to think this was anything other than a memory walk (or cruise) down Xorok Lane for Joe and Zaren?” The Labour Party would have been justified in criticising Joe’s holiday break, if only some of their top dogs hadn’t recently tripped with their own buddies in the building industry in one particular lavish corner of the Middle East. In such a pathetic situation the question that comes to mind is “Which kettle is calling which pot black?” This brings me to the subject of this article.

In the interview Joe Saliba admitted what The Greens have been stating for almost two decades: the allegation (actually I can now call it a fact) that the two major political parties receive financing from the building industry. The shocking thing is not what Joe admitted (something that is blatantly obvious to the thinking public), but the so-friggin-what way in which he admitted it. In a “normal” democratic country such an utterance would have sparked a corruption investigation of a criminal nature. In the UK, just to give an example, the loaning (not donating) of funds by rich individuals to the Labour party in exchange for peerages in the House of Lords, sparked off an investigation and contributed to the earlier-than-early retirement of Tony Blair. Only in Malta can a politician admit something like this without any shame or consequence.

In an attempt to add more insult to injury, Joe Saliba then proceeded to reassure us that even though his party is financed by contractors, this does not “translate in any way into government deals”. I see. Of course, what else were we thinking? I wonder whether the man really and truly believes that so many of us are so stupid. He can’t be that stupid, surely?
You must be aware that Joe is perfectly able to utter such things because he has the law on his side. Yes, hard as it may be to swallow, Joe Saliba is perfectly within the law saying that his party receives financing from the building industry. Indeed he would not even incriminate himself were he (hypothetically, of course) to say that his party takes donations from drug dealers. Why? Simple – in Malta it is perfectly legal for political parties to take any amount of money from anyone. We are one of the few countries in the democratic world that does not have a law regulating the financing of political parties, a fact which raises serious doubts about how democratic we truly are. In this country, the only thing a politician has to do to avoid incrimination for taking a bribe is say that the money was a donation for his party, and he was just in the process of passing the money over to his party’s treasurer. Shocking, but true. Without a law to regulate political party financing, the difference between a political bribe and a political donation is merely semantic. The Labour party in opposition is already in a position to benefit from this, irrespective of their holier-than-thou drive to convince us that they meet their bills from the two-or-five lira pledges they scrounge for during their boring and loud TV marathons. How they may be able to capitalise further if left to govern on their own alone, I will leave to your imagination. In a reaction Dr Gonzi is now stating that he is ready to publish everything, if Labour will do the same. How sweet! How transparent!

The only way to bring an end to this scandalous (though legal) situation is by ensuring that after the next general election neither of the two major parties is left to govern on its own. A coalition is what is needed. The Greens will not make endless demands in any coalition negotiations; we have no intention of creating a government in our own image and likeness. What we certainly will do however, is demand that this country is governed in a transparent way. A wholesale reform in the way political parties are financed will be one of the few demands we will impose upon our coalition partner.

Ultimately it is the people who will decide what type of government it wants. If we choose to give an absolute parliamentary majority to one of the two large parties, and sanction another five year quasi-dictatorship, then we all have to stop moralising about where and with whom our politicians take their holidays.

Edward Fenech is spokesperson for Finance and the Economy of Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party