All three established parties – Nationalist, Labour and Alternattiva Demokratika – agree with the principle of transparency in party financing. But when it comes to the finer details, it seems the same parties have yet to overcome the differences which derailed the Galdes Commission in 1992. Party financing was discussed yesterday on PBS’s Reporter, hosted by MaltaToday editor Saviour Balzan. Representing the party in government, MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando claimed the PN had no difficulty accepting the principle of openness in party funding, but would require tripartite consensus before taking any action. “Even if we are the party in government, and even if a simple majority is enough to change the situation, we don’t want to take any unilateral decisions. We want the change to be the result of agreement.” For his part, the Labour Party’s education secretary Wenzu Mintoff agreed with his PN counterpart on the need for reform, but pointed out that this did not begin with Gonzi’s speech last week. “The Galdes Commission in the 1990s had reached the basis of an agreement. The MLP made its position clear. Any donation above Lm10,000 would be illegal. Any donation above Lm5,000 would have to be declared. Both AD and the only independent member (Dolores Cristina) had agreed at the time. It was the PN which aborted the discussion, by insisting on a maximum legal donation of Lm20,000.” With the battle lines now drawn out, the two parties’ spokesmen spent much of the rest of the discussion at each other’s throats over the PN secretary general’s recent Mediterranean cruise, and the Labour Party’s delegation to Dubai last year. It was left to AD deputy chairman Stephen Cachia to gently remind the audience that the real issue was not whether Joe Saliba had the right to travel on Nazzareno Vassallo’s yacht, nor even whether either party should make its audited accounts public. “To me, the real issue is that Saliba publicly admitted that his party accepts undeclared contributions from building contractors,” Cachia said. “It is a serious matter that political parties accept donations from powerful lobby groups, when we don’t know who these people are, how much they are giving and what strings are attached to these contributions.” On the subject of published accounts, Cachia observed that these generally do not feature truckloads of stone (“vjaggi gebel”) and construction work carried out free of charge on party headquarters. In the end, it was arguably Mintoff who came closest to nailing the issue with an incisive, historical observation: “There was a time when Malta had plural voting, whereby the number of votes accorded to a citizen depended on the number of properties that citizen owned,” the MLP education secretary warned. “Today there is a danger of creating a similarly unjust system, whereby some citizens have more influence over the party in government because of their wealth.” This is indeed the crux of the matter; and significantly, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando dropped the biggest hint to date that the government may be reconsidering its earlier opposition to the Galdes conclusions. “The agreement reached 10 years ago can still be reached today,” the Nationalist MP maintained. “After all, Lm10,000 today is not the same amount as it was in 1992…” rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt