Malta’s Newest Political Party Launches Online Platform Tracking Facebook Political Spending
Volt Malta, the country’s newest political party, has launched an online platform tracking spending by the country’s political parties and politicians in a bid to increase transparency ahead of the upcoming general election.
“#PolitikaOnesta is a Volt Malta initiative to further transparency of political parties spending, using readily available tools and information, making it more accessible,” the party said.
It pledged to add further metrics to the platform in due course but said it was limiting itself to Facebook spending for the time being.
According to Facebook’s data, the Nationalist Party is currently outspending the Labour Party, having spent €1,100 over the last 90 days compared with €285 spent by the Labour Party.
ADPD had the third-highest spend, with €274 spent on Facebook ads in the last three months.
A look at the respective party leaders again shows PN leader Bernard Grech spending significantly more than Prime Minister Robert Abela.
Grech spent €2,200 over the last 90 days, while Abela’s spend was €880. Cacopardo’s spend was €20.
Volt’s website uses publicly available data to show how each political party and party leader is spending money on Facebook, adding that it viewed transparency of party finances with the “utmost importance”.
“The party believes the public should be able to easily access information on how much their political representatives receive and spend,” Volt said, adding that it also believed parties should not be able to circumvent legal obligations of reporting their donation income through companies operated by political parties.
Volt said that as things stood, it was impossible to tell how much money either of the two major parties had received. It also pointed out both the Labour and Nationalist parties had a clear donation policy available on their website.
What do you make of these numbers?
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