In a document titled ‘Getting there on time:notes on the regulation of campaign finance in Latin America the author in great detail outlines issues of campaign finance our region continues to be challenged. The BU household hardly expects the BU family to read the 122 page document although we highly recommend it.
The unexpected annoucement recently by Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite that the government has de-prioritized the implementation of anti corruption legislation should be of concern to civic minded Barbadians. By sharing a few excerpts from the document we hope to explain why the problem just got even bigger.
The opening paragraph of the document:
The relation between money and politics has come to be one of the great problems of democratic government’. It is with this sentence that James Kerr Pollock began his pioneer volume on practices of political financing in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, published in 1932. This assertion, as well as his appeal to public opinion to understand that ‘[h]ealthy political life is not possible as long as the use of money is unrestrained’, are truer today than in Pollock’s own time (1932: 328). The spread of democracy, the growing complexity of electoral processes, and the awareness of the risks posed by corruption to the viability of democracies have placed the financing of political activity at the center of the public debate worldwide. The issue has become global and urgent.
Take note that the issue of money and politics is an age old problem and one any responsible government AND citizenry must be interested in managing. To use the author’s words, “while democracy has no price, it does have an operating cost (Griner and Zovatto, 2004: 298)“.
Private financing is a legitimate and necessary tool for political parties and their candidates, with both its virtues and its dangers. Among the former, it allows political parties to engage more with society. Nonetheless, the possibility of raising private funds to finance political activities opens up an array of considerable risks to democracy. The first and most serious of these is the possibility of using money from criminal or illegal activities for political ends.
In Barbados citizens speculate about the source of funds used to finance political campaigns. What we know is that those who pay the piper gets to play the tune. The role that Leroy Parris and CLICO Barbados played to bankroll the Democratic Labour Party by the Bjerkham connection for example is evidence of how government can be influenced. In the 2013 general election many questions were asked about the source of funding of the Barbados Labour Party to fund a glossy advertising campaign. The author reflects on page 20 – that private contributions can undermine the public interest and, in extreme cases, ‘privatize’ decison-making by public officials. The foregoing easily explains why the Bjerkham Maloney interest has featured prominently in the decison-making of the Fruendel Stuart government.
The effects of faulty campaign finance regulation can be as negative as the absence of regulation, because any effort to regulate tends to raise expectations that new rules will at least be capable of moderating the worst abuses. Failed reforms leave behind a sense of disillusion and cynicism and become a barrier to new regulatory efforts.
It has become increasingly evident in the last decade that a significant number of Barbadians have become disillusioned by the existing system of elective politics. There have been growing calls for a third party, the need to implement transparency legislation, the power of the people to recall elected candidates and others. It should be very clear given the rise of the political class that this group will defend its territory to the last man standing. The fact that it is a group comprised of lawyers in the main describes a very challenging situation the region finds itself.
This category includes those instruments that regulate the flow of economic resources to political activities, both by controlling and prohibiting the use of certain sources of financing (‘negative’ or ‘passive’ regulations) and by stimulating the use of other sources (‘positive’ or ‘active’ regulations). The more widespread controls apply, as one would expect, to private political donations. Almost all democracies restrict the use of at least some types of private donations, albeit with very uneven levels of intensity. While some countries (Greece, for example) simply impose a cap on contributions, most modern democracies place an absolute prohibition on the use of certain sources of financing. The limits on individual contributions range from very low amounts in some countries to approximately USD 200,000 per year in Japan. The prohibitions, for their part, generally pertain to foreign donations—prohibited in dozens of countries—and certain types of corporate donations, typically those from state enterprises or firms that benefit from contracts or licenses granted by the state.
If we listen to those who should know there is existing legislation in Barbados that needs to be enforced. The fact that laws on the books are not enforced raises another worrying issue of weak governance. The demise of the pan Caribbean company CLICO is ample evidence the challenge of poor governance is a regional one.
Unfortunately the government of Barbados has slammed the door on addressing the issue of campaign financing. Of greater concern is whether Barbadians care.
The full text of the document can be read at the following link.
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.