How honest will your MEP be?

We are going to have to vote for our MEPs very soon and it is not going to be easy to decide who to trust.
The Sunday Times has revealed that the Nationalist Party's EP campaign chief, Stefano Mallia, has instructed the party's candidates not to disclose how much they spent on their election campaign.
He issued them with the text, which revealed nothing, that they should use in their response to the paper’s enquiry.
Each candidate's expenditure during MEP electoral campaigns should not exceed €18,200.
Now if people, who are vying to represent us in Europe, have shown us that they cannot be honest about how much money they have spent in order to get elected, how on earth do they expect us to trust them period.
Most PN candidates, including MEPs David Casa and Simon Busuttil, followed the party's directive and disclosed nothing, sending only the text prescribed by Mallia, said The Sunday Times.
Edward Demicoli was the only candidate to admit that he has exceeded the legal spending limit. Now he will probably get hammered by his party for being honest.
Rudolph Cini and Alan Deidun also ignored their campaign chief and claimed their expenditure (specifying amounts) was well below the amount they were legally allowed to spend.
The majority of the Labour (PL) candidates were also unco-operative, most simply ignored the papers' requests to disclose how much they spent on their campaign.
Maria Camilleri was the only PL candidate to fully disclose her expenses (less the half the allowed quota).
Glenn Bedingfield claimed that his advertising expenditure was kept to a minimum, while Claudette Abela Baldacchino said that her campaign was run on a shoestring budget.
Steve Borg said that a lowly wage and a family to support limited his advertising and Christian Zammit said his only promotion expenditure was a brochure he distributed throughout Gozo.
Alternattiva Demokratika sent The Sunday Times a detailed breakdown of expenditure, even money received through donations, totalling well within the allowed amount.
Azzjoni Nazzjonali’s Josie Muscat, did not reply.
Mary Gauci of Libertas, the party backed by Irish millionaire Declan Ganley, did not reply. Ironically, her political group is campaigning for Members of the European Parliament to reveal their expenses.
Now we can all make a rough estimate of how much was spent on advertising, by most contesting the election in June, just by counting the amount of brochures stuffed in our letterboxes and working out the ones with large colour advertisments in the papers and billboards.
And of course most have overspent by a long shot, especially the ones who are really in the running. Unfortunately, the ones that do not spend are the least likely to succeed. That is the way politics works. The quotas are there to give everyone a sporting chance by providing a level playing field, but as seasoned players know the election field is anything but level.
As The Sunday Times rightly pointed out “These candidates (the ones who overspent) were left with two options when the campaign was over - either take a false oath or make a false declaration of expenses.”
Either way it does no bode well for integrity and transperancy on the part of most of those who will eventually get elected.