There is absolutely no doubt that the secrecy-shrouded Cedoli collection scheme to help boost party funds and possibly help cause a chink in the solid texture of its debt mountain has not helped the Nationalist Party in Opposition. Even if it were to be hugely successful, as such initiatives often tend to be during a party’s sojourn in opposition, it will still always be a serious faux pas that will be brought up whenever political and financial credibility matters come up for discussion.
And this at a time when a government minister has been lambasted over an ill-timed, albeit empty family trust fund in daily sermons on the mount about honesty, transparency and corruption! The refusal to publish the list of donors in the PN scheme certainly does not sit well within any aspect of this evangelical twaddle, particularly in the light of the new law on party financing. By intentionally skirting this law, the Cedoli scheme suddenly becomes untrustworthy and easily a suspicious source of “funds for future rewards”, indeed a political investment based on one’s financial muscle that could one day switch to having been a financial investment based on one’s political muscle.
Would you want to invest a minimum of €10,000 in a scheme that offers back no guarantees and no transparency, however much you happen to love or support this or that party? I remember only one occasion when I chose to make a small political contribution (certainly nowhere near even a thousand), as is everyone’s right in a democratic society, and that was when Alfred Sant and George Abela launched a fund-raising scheme to help the Labour Party build new headquarters and finally come out of the humid environment of Il-Maċina that had long exhausted its purpose.
But to this day, I still have the receipts and all the paperwork involved in that scheme, testament to the above-board procedures followed throughout. There was nothing secret about it and each and every contributor knew exactly what he or she was to get back, how and when. That many chose to forfeit that small, working-class contribution was also registered in black and white and remains an obvious reflection of the insignificant amounts involved.
Financial credibility and transparency are a must in modern-day politics. One also needs to look at this Cedoli issue in the light of another reality – the fact that of the two major political parties on the island, only one, the Labour Party, publishes its audited accounts every year. For reasons never explained and incredibly overlooked by the media, including the increasingly politically-biased English language news sources, the PN refuses to do this. Are PN sympathisers so naive as to fail to see this blaring irony? I very much doubt it.
The Cedoli scheme is, one may safely assume, based on the same philosophy of utter secrecy, legal loopholes and other dark pathways that really belong to a political past, rather than the future.
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Ignored examples?
The modern Catholic Church under Pope Francis is still trying to come to grips with the traditional straightjacket it has not yet been able to shed. Over the centuries, there have been Church leaders who inspired by example, only for the traditionalists to quietly, sometimes crudely, pull the other way.
The fixation with personal and ceremonial ornaments in gold and precious stones, for example, has never really diminished, with one clerical generation after another simply choosing to sustain it as it lumbered among the faithful poor.
Pope Paul VI, for one, had long expressed his wish that cardinals would, at the end of Vatican Council II, “offer their gold chains to the poor” and wear, instead, an undistinguished “lace to hold the cross”. One can find this in V. Carbone’s 2015 book, “Il ‘diario’ conciliare di Monsignor Pericle Felici”, 17 settembre 1964, a cura di Agostino Marchetto, Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Very few, if any, of the “princes” had acceded to his wish.
The same Pope had, on 11th November 1964, given yet another example by donating to the poor the income from the sale of his traditional tiara, better known as the Trirenio in gold and silver given to him as a gift on his papal appointment by the inhabitants of Milan where he had been archbishop between 1954 and 1963. The precious artefact was sold by auction to an American buyer.
Yet another much more recent example, though there have been many more in other practical ways, has been set by the present Pope who still uses the ring and cross he was given a long time ago when he was ordained bishop rather than opting for something more grandiose.
More than half a century later, here we still read about rival band clubs signing “historic” agreements, gold coronation commemorations, new titular statues and newly-created basilicas, while more and more people rightly prefer to stay away from all the bunkum.
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The good, the bad and the ugly
So while blue flags are awarded to more bays in Malta and Gozo, certainly a good way of ensuring better management, better cleansing services, and a healthier environment, out comes the Independent with the news of a new concept for advertising – inflatable floating billboards to be set up at “the perimeter of swimming zones”.
I have this innate thing against billboards in general. They are ugly, disproportionate, and horrendously offensive to the general aesthetics of the urban environment, let alone countryside areas, some of which have also been plastered with such specimens. While recent measures to curtail, hopefully eliminate, the number of illegalities have been welcomed by people of goodwill, this new idea of bombarding our view even as we swim during the summer months does not make any sense.
Happily, the decision seems to have been quickly shelved. I was the first, and possibly the only media commentator, to condemn in this very column the use of our bays for floating billboards a couple of years or so ago when one such huge and repulsive contraption suddenly appeared in the middle of Spinola Bay at St Julian’s.
It must have been a test case.
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Supermarket stealth
The gradual spread of supermarkets across these islands has certainly helped with the creation of new jobs and better shopping choices, but how are consumers coping? European Union language regulations are blatantly ignored as, unlike the rest of the other 27 member nations, we seem to be treated as citizens with no national language of our own, even if, ironically, that language happens to be one of the EU’s so-called official languages!
Now, thanks to Which? magazine, it transpires that popular supermarket groceries in the UK are stealthily being sold in smaller quantities without a reduction in price. Research has suggested that some brands of toilet rolls, biscuits and fruit juices have shrunk considerably, but many shoppers are unaware they are effectively paying more for less.
One automatically wonders whether the same business “acumen” is being flaunted in our supermarkets. Maltese consumers can’t expect preferential treatment, I guess.