Volt Malta initiative tracks Facebook ad spending by political parties, leaders

Volt Malta has unveiled a webpage that uses Facebook’s public data to track advert spending by the political parties and their leaders.

The initiative is part of the political party’s efforts to promote transparency in party finances. Volt Malta forms part of a pan European progressive party and will be contesting the next general election.

The webpage, politikaonesta.org, gives users a breakdown of ad spending over periods of time ranging from one day to 90 days.

The Volt initiative uses publicly available data from Facebook to aggregate the information on party and leader spending

The page shows that over the past 90 days the Nationalist Party and Bernard Grech spent €1,100 and €2,200 respectively. The Labour Party and Robert Abela spent €285 and €880 respectively over the same period.

ADPD spent €274 in Facebook ads and its leader Carmel Cacopardo spent €20. Volt Malta spent €69.

Volt Malta said that the public should be able to easily access information on how much their political representatives receive and spend. It added that political parties should not be able to circumvent legal obligations of reporting their donation income through companies operated by the political parties such as MediaLink and ONE. 

The party insisted that any and all finances of a political party should be regulated through party financing law only, and not a mix of party financing law and corporate law.

“Political parties should demonstrate that they are aware of what is legally acceptable with clear donation policies on their websites,” commented Arnas Lasys Volt Malta co-president.

“It’s impossible to truly know how much money PN or PL receives, their donation reports do not paint a clear picture,” co-president Alexia DeBono said.

Vice President Kass Mallia expressed the party’s hope that the ad spending initiative inspires political parties to adopt “a healthy approach of transparency and accountability towards the public”.

The initiative will be extended over time to cover spending by all candidates.