All of this has raised questions on the size and source of funding.

Electoral law limits spending of any candidate to €20,000 per district – Camilleri is only standing in one district – and sources said that spending would also have to include any services or materials provided for free or that remain unpaid.

Any funds raised from anything charged within the campaign would be set against the expenses (some candidates charge entry fees to some events); it is not known if alcoholic drinks in Camilleri’s last rally were against payment (in which case it could be income deducted from expenses). 

Answering questions by Lovin Malta on the amount of spending and source of funds, Camilleri said that his election spending is “in observance of the law” and the source is “personal funds that would be paid by cheque.” He added that details [of spending] would “be provided in accordance with the law.”

Electoral law specifies that a breakdown of expenses, appended to a sworn affidavit by the given candidate, has to be submitted to the Electoral Commission within 31 days of the announcement of the election result. 

The single largest cost in Camilleri’s campaign is likely to be the rallies. Research by Lovin Malta suggests that the kind of rally setup seen in Camilleri’s campaign – the marquees, sound and light systems – may cost a few thousand euros for each event (there were five in total).

Then there were the four professionally-produced videos, cumulatively amounting to 10 minutes of video, as well as the material for branding: shirts, flags, boards with slogans that lined the marquee interior, the flyers dropped in letterboxes in neighbourhoods where rallies took place, pops of fireworks, the “free food” and DJs for the last rally, and private security guards that accompanied Camilleri.    

There were also Facebook sponsored posts, on which €275 were spent over seven days between 14th and 20th March (it was not possible to work out how much was spent throughout the entire campaign), as well as Google Ads (amount of spending unknown).

Little was left to chance throughout the campaign. The decision to open a hunting season for turtle doves this year went down well with hundreds of hunters in Gozo (Camilleri is in charge of the hunting portfolio, something used to be held under the wings of Environment Ministers until Prime Minster Robert Abela assigned it to Camilleri when he made him Minister for Gozo).

EU Commission sources have said that the decision has caused much dismay, considering that the turtle dove is “vulnerable” to extinction, but Camilleri sought to take ownership or credit for the decision in his rally in Nadur, where the three top men of the hunters’ federation were seated at the front row. These were current president Lucas Micallef, honorary president Joe Perici Calascione, and CEO Lino Farrugia. 

Throughout Camilleri’s campaign, the effort that went into the branding was matched by the choreography, with Camilleri making climactic pitches during his rally speeches as the young people behind him would stand up to clap at key moments.  

These pitches often displayed the lofty rhetoric usually associated with national political leaders. In the last rally, for example, he told the crowd to vote for all “Labour candidates so that we can see the Prime Minister enter Castille again and we would be here, in Gozo, to continue our mission among Gozitans.”   

The six-minute video on the life and rise of Camilleri also conjures this sense of mission.  

In another rally, he said: “Together with you we will continue working without fatigue for Gozo and Gozitans. In Gozo, I have been, in Gozo I remain, and if you place trust in me in Gozo among you I shall remain.”   

Victor Paul Borg has lived in various countries and worked as an author, journalist and photographer for around 25 years. His work has been published widely in many countries and is also featured on his website, victorborg.com.

Is enough done to enforce regulations on campaign funding?