More than $300 million was spent on election campaign financing in six elections over the last three and a half years, and where that money came from was a question to be answered, Independent senator Helen Drayton is insisting. The maximum sum that can be spent by a candidate in a general election is $15,000, and local government elections, $25,000, according to the law, she said. “Based on what we have seen, and the hundreds of millions of dollars, it is quite clear it is neither $15,000 nor $25,000 that is spent on a candidate.”
Drayton made the disclosure as she moved a motion in the Senate yesterday, to have Parliament appoint a Joint Select Committee to propose a legislative framework to govern the financing of election campaigns and submit its report with recommendations to both Houses within six months. She said the figure she got from information and research was much higher, but she did not want to be sensational.
The amount of money spent would go to higher realms if the cost of foreign consultants, transportation, production, manifestos, Web site development and maintenance were added, she said. The senator called on both the Government and the Opposition to ensure that campaign financing laws are developed and implemented in the shortest possible time. She said the laws would require political parties to be registered and to account for funds and would be to their credit.
There are no laws, at present, governing political party financing, and those governing campaign financing in the Representation of the People Act are certainly inadequate, she said. Neither that act, nor the Constitution, makes any direct reference to political party financing, Both laws address only elections and candidates. “Therefore, political parties which are nowhere on the current radar of the laws and the Constitution can raise and spend funds on candidates...And it’s no business of anyone,” she said.
She said the merits of campaign financing legislation included proper accounting, a code of conduct for political parties and giving independent and fledgling parties a fairer chance at contesting elections. New laws should also define permissible and impermissible donors, she said. Based on international laws, impermissible donors include foreigners, foreign governments, state enterprises, contractors performing public service, banks, non-governmental organisations which receive government funding and trade unions.
Drayton said in the absence of procurement legislation, it is alleged that campaign donors get state contracts through sole selective tendering, the manipulation of the tendering process and government-to-government arrangements. “When some campaign donors give money to political parties, it is seen as an investment, buying access to decision making.”
Drayton commended Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar for doing the right thing and honouring the due date for the elections in a negative environment when she could have tried to take a self-serving path.” She also praised the Elections and Boundaries Commission for efficiently conducting election after election, considering the “rabid” texture of T&T politics.