“Candidates to elected office should be judged on their abilities and qualities, their understanding of what the job entails.

Sometimes you have to be creative as a way of standing out, at other times you have to go for what’s tried and tested. Some Labour candidates seemed to have been doing pretty well organising events under a large pole tent. So, I thought, why not try and copy your competitors in what they seemed to be doing right?

I made a round of phone calls. It was not much later that I received a quotation of €6,500 (inclusive of VAT) to cover the very basics of rental of the structure and equipment. I was taken aback. It was not the price that surprised me. This was a line of business I was not familiar with and I had no idea what the going rates were.

My surprise was that a sum that would have put any candidate back considerably seemed to be no issue for some Labour MEP candidates. Their activities “under the tent” are quite regular affairs. And in many cases it was not just a basic services but with a lot of other “optionals” such as the filming of the event would have surely pushed up costs considerably.

A media organisation decided to look deeper into the matter. None of the candidates

denied anything (although, let’s face it, a marquee in the middle of a public square is not something you can hide). But we had candidates hiding behind the letter of the law, claiming that they were not yet formally candidates or that somebody else covered their expenses. This despite their having been nominated candidates by the Labour Party’s General Conference months ago.

So innocent when it comes to the letter of the law. And the spirit? You see, the law imposes a limit to how much a candidate may spend for good reason. First, it tries to create a level playing field. Candidates to elected office should be judged on their abilities and qualities, their understanding of what the job entails. Using money to obfuscate the public’s ability to make that judgement amounts to fraud.

And judging by the quality of the campaign of most Labour candidates, glitz certainly has a role in helping them avoid the details. They’ll defend the national interest, they say. Which seems to amount to nothing more than hoping to deliver a electoral drubbing to the Nationalist Party. If they’ll manage that they’ll be celebrating on 26th May; on the 27th they’ll be as clueless as to what’s expected of them like a deer caught in the headlights.

Overspending exposes democratic governance to further risk. Nobody would doubt the legitimacy concern of business to make it voice heard and to try and influence policymaking in a transparent and open way. As politicians we are duty-bound to listen carefully to what they are saying as we do with all other social partners. It is also our duty to take those ideas and do our best to transform them into policies that are workable and fair with everyone.

What’s wrong is when business operators try to buy that influence. It does not have to happen with wads of cash landing on politicians’ desks. It is sufficient for the freebies, the little favours, the price cut to start distorting the relationship between political and economic power.

Politicians should not only be above but to be seen to be above certain interests and to steer away from building up moral “debts” that take long to pay off and at a high rate of interest.

In my case, I’m happy to stay free to speak my mind, free to be transparent about what I do and, most of all, free from any obligations and the risk that sometime in the future someone will come to cash in on his little “investment”. I’m happy to stick to meeting people on the street, in their homes, at party clubs. It may be the old way of doing things but it remains the most authentic.