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Paying politics
November 11, 2001
By Denis Solomon
THE PNM hopes to win the impending elections on the grounds of the UNC's subordination to big business interests. But at the same time it boasts of the $15-20 million it intends to raise and spend for the purpose. And it does not say how it is planning to prevent the donors of the funds from cashing in on their investment, as the UNC's backers did.
The business community has a right to make financial donations to parties. The trick is to prevent donations from bringing unfair advantage to the donor, or influencing policy against the national interest.
This means that the public must know who gives what to whom. In this country the nature and extent of private contributions to party funds have always been occult. The illicit advantages enjoyed by contributors have therefore been a matter of speculation, suspicion and unsubstantiated accusation, not of public knowledge. During the oil boom from which so many of the PNM leaders profited illegally, the party is also said to have received kickbacks for grants of concessions to foreign firms, such as the Italian oil company AGIP, a transaction substantiated by a leaked document.
The impunity of prominent local entrepreneurs who flouted building codes and planning regulations under the PNM regime was not accidental.
After November 1995, the prospect of more frequent alternation of governments lent greater urgency to the desire of contributors to profit from a particular administration while it remained in power.
The UNC government made it immediately clear, by word and deed, that the era of rapid payback had begun. In its second term in office, it carried the process even further by bringing its major financial backers into the government itself.
As for the PNM, what effect its removal from government had on its finances is not clear, but it was certainly not favourable. Not long after the 1995 elections the press reported that a meeting of prominent businessmen, mostly Syrian-Lebanese, had threatened to withdraw financial support from the party unless Patrick Manning was removed from the post of party leader. Manning was re-elected, but was forced to take his begging bowl to the same businessmen to try to pay off the cost of his latest boob, the lawsuit he brought in his attempt to have the PNM deserters Lasse and Griffith thrown out of Parliament.
It is inevitable and even desirable that businesspeople should contribute to the party of their choice (or to all parties, if they want to hedge their bets). But the amount and source of financial contributions to political parties must be a matter of public record. In the United States, although the practice exists and is encouraged, there is a problem of limits: the candidate defeated in the last Democratic primary, Senator McCain, campaigned for limits on campaign funding and spending. He was supported by people who, like consumer activist Ralph Nader, would like to see the electoral playing field a little more favourable to small parties.
There is also the question of what the money is used for, and the sensitive area is of course election finance. Party contributions and campaign financing are not easy to separate. The elections playing field must be financially level. But since once it is obtained, money can be used for many purposes, control is exercised over expenditure.
Which is why the statement of the PNM "source" about the party's readiness to spend $20 million is almost certainly a declaration of intention to break the law.
In this country limits on campaign expenditure are laid down in the Representation of the People Act. But the penalties for infringement are not severe and control is minimal. The law applies to candidates, not to parties, and as long as the legitimate expenses are accounted for by the candidate's election agent, nobody searches too hard for the illegitimate ones. So once a party can find the funds it can indulge freely in rum-and-roti politics. And although media houses may give equal time to the official broadcasts of parties, a rich party can still flood the airwaves with paid advertisements.
We need to provide ourselves with a mechanism not only to curb outright illegalities committed by governments in rewarding or protecting their financial supporters, but also to set the ground rules for the relationship between parties and their backers, and to ensure transparency in their implementation.
First, there must be rules for compulsory public declaration of financial contributions to political parties. It should not be necessary to track the contributions down in the tax returns of the parties and firms. There should be strict and equal limits on access to the media, whether paid or not.
There must also be an enforcement and monitoring body. The obvious organ for this purpose is the Integrity Commission. The recently amended Integrity in Public Life Act does not deal with party financing. But public life begins with elections, and applies to groups as well as to individuals.
Instead of promising to create an anti-corruption body that existed already, Kamla Persad-Bissessar should have pledged to extend its powers, and resources, to cover party financing.
Copyright © 2004 Denis Solomon