Democracy is undermined by people not knowing how things work (2)

Marco Gaffarena thinks that donations are bribes or payment for services rendered

Marco Gaffarena, like the social scumbag and corrupt crook he is, is “threatening to reveal” that he gave the Nationalist Party donations (the Nationalist Party says it has no knowledge of any such donations).

Gaffarena says he has “documents” and yet he doesn’t publish them immediately, which is what a straightforward person would have done. Because Gaffarena is not a straightforward person: he is a corrupt man raised by another corrupt man and his mentality is completely corrupted.

“Documents” – to people of this nature – are not evidence or proof that one is telling the truth. “Documents” are a weapon to be used to threaten others until they back down, give you what you want, or both.

As the Nationalist Party’s deputy leader, Beppe Fenech Adami, remarked to the press – how tragic that he should have to – the point is not whether Marco Gaffarena donated money to the Nationalist Party or not. The point is whether he got what he wanted in return.

Clearly, Gaffarena is donating or has donated money to the Labour Party or to individual Labour politicians, and is getting what he wants in return. This means – in European democratic parlance – that those were not donations but bribes; in other words, corruption.

Donations to political parties are normal in western democracy. People have the right to donate to political parties just as they have the right to donate to any other organisation of which they approve and whose work they wish to ensure continues.

Donations to political parties are in fact a crucial facet of democracy because they are the main way people have of making sure that the political ideals and political groups which they support survive to fight another day.

Yet in Maltese society, which did not grow and evolve into western democracy but had western democracy foisted upon it and understands it to be nothing more than a general election every five years, donations to political parties are understood in terms of bribery.

All donations to political parties are therefore treated with suspicion when discovered and pounced on triumphantly by supporters of the opposing party. This is terrible, debilitating ignorance.

Let us take the example of the Café Premier. The Nationalist Party accused the Labour Party of accepting donations from Mario Camilleri, a director of the company which ran that coffee shop into bankruptcy, donations which he then used as leverage to get his deal from the incoming Labour government.

The point was not the donations themselves. Donations to political parties are a normal, legitimate and essential part of democracy. The point was that the donation was treated as a bribe or payment for something in return.

How did the sleazy Mario Camilleri counter that? By saying that he donated money (a risible thousand euros, as it turned out) to the Nationalist Party. And it worked. Within minutes, the Labour Party’s media machine had cranked into gear, churning out the message that Camilleri was a PN donor. And people who should know better – why, even lawyers, to my horror – began repeating it: “Mario Camilleri gave money to the Nationalist Party.”

“Errr, yes,” I responded. “But he got nothing in return, which means that the Nationalist Party treated it like a democratic donation even if he may have intended it to be a (very cheap) bribe. You should distinguish between bribes, which are corrupt and anti-democratic, and donations, which are an essential element of democracy.”