A report in The Times revealed that the Malta Labour Party and its subsidiary companies are in debt to the tune of Lm2 million. It also stated that close to half of the
Lm200,000 or so collected by the party in the relentless fund-raising drives on Super One throughout the year only serves to cover the interests on these debts. Although the party has more than enough assets to cover the debts, the report goes on to say, it also quotes a party source saying that “assets do not pay the wages and bills”. In sum, when the MLP pleads for funds to convey its message better, it is really pleading for funds to pay itself out of deep financial problems.
The PN’s financial situation does not seem to be much better. Although its debt has apparently been decreasing over the years, in 2003 it still owed its creditors around Lm3million. With the building of the new headquarters in Pieta, I would think that this figure would grow rather than shrink. Clearly, the blue party is as much in the red as the red party.
What are the two main parties up to? How did they get themselves in such a financial mess? Where is the money going? Are they both missing the irony that if they are to be trusted with the public purse they should first prove their ability to take care of their private one.
As is often the case, despite the globalisation of the world and its communications, we insist on marching to the beat of a different drummer, convinced that we are the only ones whistling in tune. While political parties in Europe and the rest of the democratic world continue to go in one direction, we continue to believe that ours can and should go in another.
Historically, both political parties occupied a larger place in society than they should have. To belong to a party meant more than just voting for it once every five years.
Today, the MLP and the PN are no longer political parties in the classical or even the contemporary sense. They are two vast media corporations with a political party as the board of directors. This is the problem at the heart of the two parties’ financial woes. Actually, it is two problems in one. A media corporation cannot be run with a political agenda as its mission statement. And a political party should be doing politics not run a media corporation.
When close to a decade and a half ago the two political parties were granted a licence to have their own radio and television stations it was the biggest blow against democracy since the eighties. I did not think so at the time – as my being the first chairman of Radio 101 clearly demonstrates – but I have completely changed my mind. My dream was that party-owned stations in Malta would follow the RAI Uno, Due, Tre model. Each political station would have its own ‘slant’ but ultimately each would treat facts as sacred and their audience’s intelligence even more so.
Today, that dream has turned into a national nightmare. Party stations are not stations at all. They are boring, plodding and inelegant propaganda machines whose underlying assumption is that their audiences have an intelligence quotient close to that of a bright amoeba. Even on their own terms, they are not succeeding: because they are overtly and relentlessly partisan, they fail to convince anyone except the diehards who don’t need convincing in any case. Bottom line: party stations are not scoring many political points for the parties which own them.
But evidently an additional problem is surfacing. Not only are the party stations not delivering on the political front, they have become a massive financial burden on the very same parties as well. Even here, it is not difficult to realise what happened.
A media corporation can never be run successfully by a political party. The former responds to market forces while the latter subsumes market (and all other forces, for that matter) to a single goal: political gain. A politician is not, cannot and should not be a businessman. The only use that stations have for their political owners is for them to throw their weight around with advertisers. I know what I’m talking about. Yet even here, it appears that parties are no longer able to sustain their stations in this way.
Then there is the other, equally worrying, problem. Because of the energy, time, money and human resources required to run their stations, the PN and MLP are failing to rethink their roles now that we are in Europe. The two Super Ones, NET and Radio 101 are shackling the parties which own them from look forward and actually getting there.
Contemporary European parties are investing in policy think-tanks, in the ways and means of projecting themselves and their politics effectively in the independent media and in making contact with an electorate which is increasingly finding politics a marginal issue in their life.
The two main political parties in Malta are doing nothing of the sort. Their own stations are draining them at the same time that they give them a false sense of comfort and security. Like the hard drugs addict, the PN and MLP have become dependent on that which they know is not doing them any good.
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