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Karl Schembri
If you voted for the Nationalist Party in the last general election, then you may want to know that your vote is being used by the party to set its fundraising targets for Christmas, and its value is 25c.
In a letter sent to all the party’s sectional committees, PN Secretary General Joe Saliba urges them to collect 25c for every vote garnered from every locality in the 2003 election so that they would present them as donations on 13 December – the day when both parties organise their annual Christmas fundraising marathon.
Sent last October together with a sheet outlining the number of votes for every locality, Saliba says in his letter that the two top committees that raise most funds above their established targets will be awarded plasma screens, while the third committee will be given the great opportunity to open a bar during next year’s Independence feasts.
“The target is worked out at 25c for every vote that the party garnered in the last general election,” Saliba wrote.
This would translate into Lm33,188.75 if the committees stick to Saliba’s targets, although some committee activists have already said he can “forget it” given the low morale among most of the Nationalists. This would mean that Birkirkara’s committee has the ‘hard task’ of collecting Lm2,277.25 – the value of 9,109 votes cast for the PN in 2003, followed by Sliema, where the target is set at Lm1,807.25 and Mosta at Lm1,788.
The solitary PN activists in Xghajra, on the other hand, will have an easy job to collect their share. They had just 249 voters in 2003, meaning that their target is a measly Lm62.25.
The PN is not new to some odd fundraising methods. Last August, MaltaToday revealed letters sent to party activists on their birthday, urging them to buy lottery tickets so that the party could finance its new headquarters.
The party’s treasurer, Peter Darmanin, has also invented a new scheme for activists to “leave their name on the PN’s glorious history”, which effectively means they will have their name listed with the amount donated on a book stored in some room at l-Istamperija.
The PN also embarked on what it called a “membership blitz”, with party functionaries, ministers and MPs roaming around the islands on Saturdays in a bid to convince the tesserati to renew their membership, although party insiders say the campaign has been unsuccessful.
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
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