Congratulations are due to the wonderful folks at the Daphne Foundation who, together with Transparency International, launched an interactive public database that gives users an overview of declared donations given to political parties as well as MPs’ asset declarations. Asset declarations are forms which MPs are obliged to fill in annually and which are, at least on paper, meant to serve as a register that documents their wealth.
I am reproducing their press release in full below, including a brief blurb about the Integrity Watch project. I am underlining one of the main points raised within the press release because I wish to discuss it further (my comments on that will be included below the press release).
You can download a copy of the platform’s user guide by clicking here.
INTEGRITY WATCH MALTA LAUNCHED – Interactive database provides overview of political party donations and MPs’ declarations of wealth
The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation has collaborated with anti-corruption global civil society organisation Transparency International to launch Integrity Watch Malta, a user-friendly interactive database that provides a unique overview of political party donations and MPs’ declarations of wealth and deposits in Malta.
This is part of Transparency International’s Integrity Watch 3.0 project, developed for the prevention, detection, and reduction of political corruption in 16 EU countries. From data collected in Malta, the lack of transparency in the financing of political parties is evident, as the sources of almost 99% of all donations to political parties between 2016 and 2019 remain undisclosed to the public, though they are known to the political parties themselves.
Over €13 million is attributed to “anonymous donors”, while only €192,019 is credited to an identified donor. This means that the public has no way of knowing who is behind these donations and the reasons behind these donors’ generosity. For example, between 2016 and 2019, the Nationalist Party received over €5,074,939 in unattributed donations, while it only had two named donors who between them donated over
€39,000. On the other hand, the Labour Party received over €4,147,648 in unattributed donations, with only 12 named donors who between them donated €163,019.
By clicking on the graphs or lists on Integrity Watch Malta, users can rank, sort, and filter the individual politicians’ wealth and deposits declarations, as well as the donations given to the political parties, which are separated into donations not exceeding €50, donations not
exceeding €500, donations exceeding €500 but not €7,000, and donations over €7,000.
About Integrity Watch:
Integrity Watch, a project spearheaded by Transparency International, is the leading online hub that monitors integrity in political decision-making across Europe. It collects and harmonises hard-to-access data into searchable platforms, allowing watchdogs, journalists and officials to keep office holders in check.
Integrity Watch provides officials, citizens, civil society and journalists with a series of online tools for the prevention, detection and reduction of political corruption in 16 EU countries. The project strengthens safeguards for the prevention, detection, and reduction of political corruption risks in 16 EU countries through better disclosure of relevant data.
___
Now read that underlined sentence again.
‘…the sources of almost 99% of all donations to political parties between 2016 and 2019 remain undisclosed to the public, though they are known to the political parties themselves.’
There is nothing which should arouse your suspicion more than someone who refuses to explain where their wealth is coming from. A refusal to explain is no different to admitting that you have a vested need for secrecy. We are not talking about a confidential report documenting contact with extra-terrestrials – given that the finances of smaller parties are effectively negligible in comparison, we are mainly talking about the financial lifelines of two major political parties that shaped Maltese political history here.
In a duopoly, the system – whatever kind of system is built around this binary existence – only works if the two major entities involved more or less follow the same rulebook. The minute one side stops playing by the rules, as has been the case for over a decade, the system begins to crumble. Checks and balances begin flying out of the window. Democracy is all but eroded as one side actively seizes power and the other is left to rot. Sounds familiar?
Here’s the neat part, though. There is more than one way to subvert this system that was purposefully built to suit the purposes of the two major political parties. The Labour Party chose the crudest, least imaginative route, breaking all boundaries of normalcy within the political sphere by charging in guns blazing, assassinating any and all characters which stood in its way.
The Nationalist Party has always had another option which it never chose to fully avail itself of, and therein lies its greatest fault. In its failure to understand that the party had a golden opportunity to emerge from the doldrums of defeat as a party that is fully open to scrutiny, the Nationalist Party never dared touch its own sacred cows, the ‘anonymous’ donors which form the overwhelming bulk of the party’s capital.
Obviously, the Labour Party, riding high as its been on a wave of populism, corruption, cronyism, and greed, would never even think of doing such a thing. The Nationalist Party, which depends on the same network of questionable donors that the Labour Party depends on, could have easily taken its own cue from the 2016 general elections and proved that it is willing to open up to new ways of doing politics out in the open by fully declaring each and every donation it receives.
Instead, we have a sordid situation in which the citizens of a country that purports itself to be a European member state with a fair, open democracy are not able to scrutinise the financiers who effectively own the titans of the local political scene.
If we are to ever have general elections in which political parties can no longer hide who’s financing them, this is going to be a battle that must be fought in unison by every civil society entity that has a stake in the matter.
