Renu­ka Singh

The Cam­paign Fi­nance Re­form (CFR) leg­is­la­tion will not be de­bat­ed be­fore Par­lia­ment goes on a break at the end of this week.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi yes­ter­day con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the leg­is­la­tion will be worked on at the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) “as we go in­to re­cess”.

Changed to the re­port­ing of cam­paign fi­nance was an “ur­gent pri­or­i­ty” in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) man­i­festo back in 2015.

Ac­cord­ing to the man­i­festo promise, the PNM said they planned to put an end to the “per­ni­cious scourge of po­lit­i­cal in­vestors, once and for all”.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2015 man­i­festo “the PNM will draft, en­act and im­ple­ment ap­pro­pri­ate cam­paign fi­nance leg­is­la­tion”.

Four years lat­er in April 2019, Al-Rawi said that the pro­posed Cam­paign Fi­nance Re­form leg­is­la­tion would be brought to Par­lia­ment in a cou­ple of weeks.

At that time, in re­sponse to ques­tions from then op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen, Al-Rawi said the CFR leg­is­la­tion would make it manda­to­ry to reg­u­late par­ties’ fi­nanc­ing.

Ear­li­er this year, in May Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that the CFR would en­sure that an­oth­er Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca sit­u­a­tion does not arise.

At that time Row­ley said that the CFR would be in­sti­tut­ed be­fore the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions and said then that he ex­pect­ed to send the draft bill to a JSC for con­sid­er­a­tion.

In May Row­ley crit­i­cised the ex­ist­ing law.

He said that the ex­ist­ing law does not reg­u­late the role and im­pact of the me­dia dur­ing an elec­tion cam­paign, it does not pro­vide al­ter­na­tive sources of fund­ing, such as pub­lic fund­ing, to even the play­ing field for all in­ter­est­ed in po­lit­i­cal of­fice to present their unique po­lit­i­cal mes­sages to vot­ers.

The ex­ist­ing law, Row­ley said, does not pun­ish po­lit­i­cal par­ties for the mis­use and mis­ap­pli­ca­tion of fund­ing which cre­ates the op­por­tu­ni­ty for cor­rup­tion and mon­ey laun­der­ing.

The cur­rent law al­so does not reg­u­late the in­cum­bent gov­ern­ment’s ac­cess to state re­sources be­fore and dur­ing an elec­tion cam­paign pe­ri­od.

He said then that that “loop­hole” pre­sent­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sup­ple­ment a can­di­date’s re­sources with State re­sources.

The new bill pro­vides that do­na­tions made in ex­cess of $50,000 will be a tax-de­ductible ex­pense and must be pub­licly dis­closed.

The donors, the na­ture and amount of that do­na­tion and the date the do­na­tion is made must be pub­lished.

The leg­is­la­tion al­so took Gov­ern­ment ten­der­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

The Bill pro­vides that where a per­son, com­pa­ny or oth­er en­ti­ty makes a con­tri­bu­tion to a reg­is­tered po­lit­i­cal par­ty or a can­di­date, in ex­cess of $50,000, and, with­in two years be­fore mak­ing the con­tri­bu­tion, had en­tered in­to a Gov­ern­ment con­tract hav­ing a con­tract val­ue in ex­cess of$2,000,000, it shall be de­clared to the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion with­in 14 days af­ter mak­ing the con­tri­bu­tion.

Al­so, all reg­is­tered po­lit­i­cal par­ties will be en­ti­tled to re­ceive state fund­ing.