DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

Un­known po­lit­i­cal fi­nanciers, work­ing be­hind the scenes, play a piv­otal role in elec­tions. These are the peo­ple who fi­nance po­lit­i­cal par­ties and even fi­nance po­lit­i­cal lead­ers out of of­fice.

That was the view of econ­o­mist Den­nis Pan­tin who spoke yes­ter­day, the sec­ond day of the in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence on Strength­en­ing De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Process­es and Good Gov­er­nance, at the Hilton Trinidad. In his pre­sen­ta­tion, Pan­tin spoke about "en­tre­pre­neur­ial pol­i­tics," which he de­scribed as peo­ple in­vest­ing in po­lit­i­cal par­ties from which they get pay­back. He said: "One of the things that fa­cil­i­tates this is an opaque sys­tem where you do not know where the mon­ey is com­ing from but then you see a cer­tain pat­tern of de­ci­sion-mak­ing in terms of the award of con­tracts in a par­tic­u­lar con­struc­tion of con­tract, which seems to be go­ing to par­tic­u­lar peo­ple over and over."

Speak­ing on gen­uine democ­ra­cy, he said: "There must be trans­paren­cy. There must be par­ty-fi­nance reg­u­la­tions." Pan­tin al­so rec­om­mend­ed a mixed elec­toral sys­tem which would com­prise civ­il so­ci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives work­ing in the Elec­tions Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) or a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from each po­lit­i­cal par­ty work­ing with the EBC to en­sure trans­paren­cy. He al­so pro­posed the idea of im­ple­ment­ing a civ­il so­ci­ety sen­ate.Pan­tin said at least two rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the civ­il so­ci­ety should have seats re­served in the sen­ate. He said that would al­low the peo­ple to have a voice and for re­al is­sues to be pre­sent­ed, not those based on race.

Pan­tin added civ­il so­ci­ety was suit­able as it crossed racial di­vide. With re­gards to the draft con­sti­tu­tion, he said the process by which it was pre­sent­ed in town hall meet­ings for the pub­lic to re­spond in a few min­utes did not rep­re­sent gen­uine par­tic­i­pa­tion. Pan­tin said pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion must oc­cur pri­or to all ma­jor pol­i­cy-de­ci­sions to en­sure gen­uine democ­ra­cy took place. Oth­er pre­sen­ters in­clud­ed Dr Hans Breeveld, di­rec­tor Democ­ra­cy Unit, Uni­ver­si­ty of Suri­name; Har­ald Pak­endorf, jour­nal­ist and se­nior po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, South Africa and Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, head of the Crit­i­cal Think­ing and Re­search Unit at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.