Buddan
Robert Buddan, Contributor
I BELIEVE in the principle of public finance for political campaigns. Politics is a public activity and the country must be willing to pay for fair and equitable financial support to political parties.
This would give a better chance to newer parties that are less well-connected to the families and corporations that back the established ones and indeed to parties that support low income people with less disposable incomes to spend on campaign support.
It would also take the burden off party leaders themselves who make large personal contributions to party campaigns and use their private property as collateral to get bank loans to fund party activities.
Political parties are non-profit organisations and depend on campaign contributions from private sources. The problem in capitalist democracies is that the minority classes with wealth are able to neutralise the majority vote of the poor by buying into the programmes of political parties. Money provides more influence to the wealthy in proportion to their numbers. The democratic principle of "one man-one vote" is corrupted by the capitalist principle of "many classes-different wealth".
Progressive people in capitalist democracies have struggled with the issue of campaign finance and their experience shows how difficult it is to get around the influence of private wealth.
THE PRIVATE SECTOR BIAS OF DEMOCRACY
One problem has to do with the political economy of representative democracy. Governments depend heavily on the state of the economy - growth, jobs, and investments- for their own reputation as good macro-economic managers. They must therefore have the "confidence" of the private sector as it is euphemistically termed.
Even without private donations to party campaigns, political parties will still be forced by reality to court the private sector and to promise or provide special inducements and incentives to strategically placed companies and players in the economy.
Tax benefits, subsidies, credit, and the like as well as giving close hearing to private sector opinion are always parts of the process of courting the private sector.
State financing of campaigns will not change the bias that Governments give to the private sector because that bias is built into the liberal democratic-market economy mix.
Campaign finance reform better addresses cases where specific favours are obtained in exchange for campaign contributions and an effective contracts commission can help to deal with this.
POST-ELECTION INFLUENCE
Even if campaigns are publicly financed and no private contributor has a special influence over parties, the problem remains of pay-offs to persons after elections are held when those persons get into government.
In fact, it makes better sense for companies or wealthy individuals to wait to see who wins, since they might invest in a loser, and then influence the persons who get into government. They will then have a better idea of which ministers are in charge of what.
The reason the problem of campaign finance is so great in the United States is that it doesn't matter who wins the presidency. Democrats and Republicans are always strongly represented in Congress and they both make important decisions on the numerous committees of Congress.
This makes it important to influence who wins congressional seats quite apart from who wins the presidency.
CITIZEN'S RIGHTS
Another problem relates to political rights in a democracy. A citizen has the right to support the political party of his choice.
The meaning of the word "support" includes making monetary contributions to parties. Democracies accept that citizens must not be prevented from supporting parties or candidates with money.
Democracies believe, however, that there should be reasonable limits on what each company, trade union, or individual can give so that those who can give significantly more do not have significantly more influence. Campaign finance laws do not therefore exclude private donations entirely.
The laws either insist on a limit to the absolute amount that can be provided privately or they give parties or candidates the option of accepting a limited amount of private donations to qualify for (partial) public financing.
EFFECTIVE LAWS
It is one thing to legislate state funding for party campaigns. It is another to make the laws effective in curbing private funding. When restrictions are placed on private funding, parties and their constituent groups develop novel and creative ways to obtain private funding by getting around the laws.
The Americans have proven particularly adept at this. When laws were passed to restrict the amount of money that could be donated directly to a candidate's campaign, American politicos created Public Action Committees (PACs) to which campaign contributions went and which were then indirectly spent on the candidate's campaign.
Then, laws were passed to limit the amount of money that could be contributed indirectly to a candidate's campaign. So, Americans created issue advocacy groups that would raise money independently of the candidate's efforts and spend it themselves on their own advertising and other campaign activities but to promote the same causes as the candidates they favour.
This is what the Americans call "soft money" and which is the new subject of controversy in America's campaign finance politics. Soft money provides more in campaign donations than hard money (direct contributions to a candidate) does.
PARTY FUND-RAISING
Party fund-raising efforts constitute another difficulty for the laws. Facing restrictions on private financing, political parties expand their own sales and marketing efforts.
Tickets for party dinners, fees for speeches by party candidates, party commerce (sales of memorabilia, buttons, stickers, T-shirts, caps, etc), fetch enormous amounts of money worth much more than the dinner, speech or item.
Politicians even use government services to earn money privately. In Britain, Parliamentary Question Time was turned into a sham when MPs began asking questions on behalf of wealthy "constituents" seeking information from governments about what they were going to privatise, deregulate, tax, subsidise, etc., in order that these special interests might position themselves to benefit.
This cash-for-questions practice led to major scandals. In Britain too, big businessmen spent thousands of pounds to get private dinners (business chats) with prime ministers.
Politicians like Bill Clinton used birthday parties to obtain large cash (birthday) gifts and offered wealthy people the privilege of sleeping in the White House for large sums of money. Parties say that if they do not earn their own money then political influence will pass to the press (which faces no restriction on who or what it can campaign for), and issue advocacy groups calling themselves civil society groups, who will then control public opinion.
Parties say that by restricting the rights of parties, other organised groups facing no restriction, get an advantage in influencing how people should vote.
NON-MONETARY SUPPORT
The laws would also have to take into account the fact that private contributions do not have to be of a monetary nature. Private interests can donate cars, buses, apartments, hotel rooms, telephones, computers, printing services, and so on, to a campaign and these would have the same effect as cash donations.
What cannot be given in cash can be given in kind and the provision of campaign services can be so private and dispersed that it would be hard to detect and account for to determine their equivalent value to cash contributions.
Citizens insist that they have a right to volunteer their support for parties in these ways.
Unfortunately, none of these campaign finance laws have satisfied citizens in the developed democracies. They are still convinced that wealth buys power.
THE JAMAICAN CASE
In Jamaica, we must bear certain realities in mind. Governments often have to rely on a relatively small number of wealthy individuals and corporations to buy companies that they need to divest - like Air Jamaica, hotels and sugar factories. This gives such persons the leverage to get sweet deals even without buying influence.
The more these interests come to own the more leverage they have over government because of their importance to the economy. This allows them to get more advantages like debt write-offs and discounted purchase prices. How would we distinguish between these sweet deals and corrupt pay-backs?
Also, we depend heavily on foreign investment. Many countries forbid foreign contributions to political campaigns (although scandals suggest that those laws may have been broken from time to time).
We might wish to do the same and foreign corporations have been criticised for encouraging corruption by buying influence to get licenses and market shares in overseas markets. But, foreign corporations as a whole have global markets and technology that give them a natural advantage over local companies so that they might not need to buy influence since so much is done to attract them in.
Finally, what is the point of preventing big money from influencing politics in Jamaica when the IMF, World Bank, and WTO get governments to pursue pro-business policies anyway? In fact, good governance today is equated with the provision of a "market-friendly environment", another euphemism for policies that favour business.
I believe we must provide partial public finance for campaigns, be realistic about what private donations (cash and kind) are permitted and what cannot be prevented; see where the present contracts and integrity commissions, criminal laws, codes of conduct and anti-corruption act can be strengthened against special favours and the influence of "dirty money."
The private sector should create and enforce a code of ethics for campaign finance as well. But ultimately, the bias towards big business will remain.
Robert Buddan is a Lecturer in the department of Government at the University of the West Indies. E-mail: buddan@uwimona.edy.jm
