News • 11 May 2003

Political parties heavily in debt

The debts amassed by the PN and MLP in the run up to the election and referendum campaigns, run into the six-figure bracket, sources have told MaltaToday.

Both parties are heavily in debt every time elections are contested but while political parties, like most businesses, operate with overdrafts, the debts run up for the recent referendum and elections are the highest ever, the sources said.

News of the debts spread like wildfire over the past few days. However, asked yesterday by PBS journalist Ivan Camilleri whether he was aware that the Labour party was in debt, Alfred Sant said "it is the first time I am hearing this... the last time I saw our balance sheet we were doing well."

PN Secretary General Joe Saliba was not available for comment when this newspaper tried to contact him.

Despite the fund raising events conducted at Christmas time and midway through the referendum and election campaigns by both political parties, that yielded nearly a million Liri in donations, the parties have a cash flow problem.

None of the money pledged by telephone will make it to the party coffers until later on this year. Maltacom distributes the money collected from telephone donations back to the respective parties only when it has received the cash payments from clients via their telephone bill.

While the political parties have got at each other’s throats over the past years for mismanaging government finances and allowing a budget deficit to build up, neither of the large political parties have done too well with their own finances, it seems.