Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

The po­lit­i­cal par­ties, aid­ed and abet­ted by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, le­git­i­mate and that seg­ment which op­er­ates be­hind a web of in­trigue, il­le­git­i­ma­cy and vi­o­lence, have con­spired to de­lude the na­tion­al elec­torate in­to be­liev­ing there was an in­ten­tion to have leg­is­la­tion in place to gov­ern the fi­nanc­ing of the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign. For 25 years and more, it has been clear that par­ties have been invit­ing busi­ness cor­po­ra­tions to pur­chase in­flu­ence in the award of con­tracts through the fund­ing of their elec­tion cam­paigns.

A Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment won of­fice in 2010 on the ba­sis of hav­ing vig­or­ous­ly cam­paigned against al­le­ga­tions of deep cor­rup­tion (un­doubt­ed­ly in­volv­ing cam­paign fi­nanciers) in the PNM gov­ern­ment to the lev­el of hun­dreds of mil­lions.

"We will en­hance democ­ra­cy by strength­en­ing ex­ist­ing in­sti­tu­tions and by es­tab­lish­ing new in­sti­tu­tions or ap­pro­pri­ate in­fra­struc­ture to sup­port ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, con­sul­ta­tion, par­tic­i­pa­tion and con­sen­sus-build­ing and more mean­ing­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tion." PP Man­i­festo.

How­ev­er, the Par­lia­ment waits four years and more be­fore it es­tab­lished in De­cem­ber last a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee to en­gage this vi­tal sub­ject of in­vestors brib­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties through the fi­nanc­ing of cam­paigns. In­ci­den­tal­ly, four elec­tions were held dur­ing the pe­ri­od all amidst al­le­ga­tions of in­vestor cor­rup­tion, yet no hope of leg­is­la­tion and reg­u­la­tions be­ing put in place for the 2015 poll.

But that should not be sur­pris­ing. More than a year ago At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said cam­paign fi­nance leg­is­la­tion would come in Jan­u­ary 2016.

That was clear in­di­ca­tion that there was nev­er an in­ten­tion on the part of the Gov­ern­ment to have the leg­is­la­tion passed in time for it to be put in­to ef­fect be­fore the poll.

The po­si­tion of the op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment has been to the ef­fect that it would not "tie its hands be­hind its back" and en­gage in any­thing that would de­ny in­vestors an op­por­tu­ni­ty to fund its elec­tion cam­paign while the oth­er par­ties re­ceive in­vest­ment dol­lars.

The par­ties, judg­ing from the very ex­pen­sive and ex­pan­sive cam­paign­ing that has al­ready be­gun, have be­gun to re­ceive mil­lions in gifts from dif­fer­ent seg­ments of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty; the in­vestors in­tent on se­cur­ing for them­selves con­tracts and pro­tec­tion as in the in­stance of Sec­tion 34.

Just in case you think this to be jour­nal­is­tic hy­per­bole, there is a case now in the court sys­tem in which an en­tre­pre­neur/po­lit­i­cal in­vestor is at­tempt­ing to re­trieve what he says was a loan/gift ($60 mil­lion) to a par­tic­u­lar cam­paign man­ag­er of a par­ty.

Cor­po­rate ex­ec­u­tives do not throw around that kind of mon­ey with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a re­turn on in­vest­ment.

Even the then po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty had con­sis­tent­ly re­quired the in­di­vid­ual, who is said to have re­ceived the do­na­tion/loan, to ac­count for the funds. In­vest­ing in po­lit­i­cal par­ties by the le­git­i­mate and il­le­git­i­mate busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is a blue chip in­vest­ment that re­turns con­tracts worth bil­lions for the in­vest­ment of a few mil­lion dol­lars.

Dur­ing elec­tion cam­paigns the par­ties charge each oth­er for re­ceiv­ing fund­ing for their cam­paigns from drug deal­ers.

Against such a back­ground, mem­ber of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee Prakash Ra­mad­har last week sought to find an ex­cuse for why cam­paign fi­nance leg­is­la­tion has not been brought to the Par­lia­ment in time for the poll said. "It would be wrong re­al­ly to weigh this is­sue as if it was de­layed for any rea­son oth­er than the fact that we had a pri­or­i­ty list­ing, pro­cure­ment be­ing on the high­est...."

Who de­ter­mines pri­or­i­ty and for what rea­sons? But even the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion which he says was giv­en high pri­or­i­ty, al­though passed in last De­cem­ber is un­like­ly to be im­ple­ment­ed be­fore the elec­tion while bil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts are be­ing giv­en out free sheet. They can­not fool lit­tle chil­dren with their acts of hypocrisy and bla­tant dis­hon­esty.

In­ci­den­tal­ly, Ra­mad­har is the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, the par­ty which con­test­ed on the ba­sis of be­ing the con­science of the pol­i­tics and had di­vined for it­self to be the moral con­science of the gov­ern­ment in "New Pol­i­tics."

What of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. El­e­ments of it have stayed far from say­ing any­thing about cam­paign fi­nance leg­is­la­tion; they will do noth­ing to be with­out in­flu­ence along the cor­ri­dors of pow­er. These are some of the "good cit­i­zens" who be­come self right­eous and crit­i­cal of gov­ern­ments and oth­ers when com­ment­ing on some form of per­ceived wrong-do­ing in gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing the award of con­tracts.

They were amongst those who de­vel­oped a Code of Ethics (no­tably miss­ing a state­ment on cam­paign fi­nance) for the par­ties to fol­low in their cam­paigns, yet they do not hold them­selves to any code with re­gard to eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions when it comes to in­vest­ing in the Trea­sury.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar cam­paign fi­nanc­ing is grad­u­al­ly erod­ing the fran­chise hard-won by or­di­nary work­ers and peo­ples or­gan­i­sa­tions dur­ing the 1930s and 1940s.

The pow­er of the av­er­age elec­tor is be­ing un­done by the glitzy cam­paigns con­cerned more with fluff than sub­stance.

Cam­paign funds are de­vot­ed to pur­chas­ing dou­bly ex­pen­sive time on tele­vi­sion, ra­dio and ads in the news­pa­pers. Tee shirts, para­pher­na­lia, sound sys­tems and raz­zle daz­zle that take over the stage while the con­tent of the plat­form is fo­cused around dis­tor­tion, dis­hon­esty and mat­ters which can­not trans­form the so­ci­ety.