We find interesting, and worthy of serious debate, Bruce Golding's suggestion that candidates for Parliament be required to disclose their incomes and assets as part of proposed party-finance reform.

The logic of Mr. Golding's position is that parties ought not to be asked, and required, to report on who funds them without the same responsibility resting on those who seek to represent these parties in the legislature.

Indeed, Members of Parliament already have to file annual assets and liability reports with the Integrity Commission these are not made public and legislators are often late in submitting the returns. On the face of it, therefore, a requirement for public disclosure by candidates would force a similar demand on sitting parliamentarians and their immediate families. This is likely to be resisted by MPs, but could change given Mr. Golding's emerging posture.

We are also encouraged by Mr. Golding's promise that his Jamaica Labour Party will accept, "without question" any recommendations that will emerge from the Electoral Commission about party finance, notwithstanding his seeming continued unease at the possibility that parties might have to name their contributors. So, he wants this issue to be first discussed with the private sector so as to take their views into account.

Our position, however, is that public disclosure of donors must not be constrained by the opinion of private sector officials, who might prefer to keep their contributions secret. In the first place, there ought to be no shame in political donation; and second, the public must have the right to determine whether quid pro quo deals may have been struck between parties and beneficiaries of government projects. This is a fundamental principle of governance.

Indeed, Mr. Golding ought not to be too concerned that secretive private sector donors may stop contributing. If they do, then so be it. It should be then up to political parties to energise grass-roots supporters to help finance the election of the organisations whose programmes and policies they believe worthy of government.

Barack Obama, the U.S. presidential candidate, has recently demonstrated how this is possible. Mr. Obama has reported having so far raised about US$25 million for his campaign. What is important about this is that a substantial portion of this money has come from people who gave between $50 and $100. The Obama campaign has received contributions from 100,000 people.

In any event, Jamaican political parties should be wary of turning their operations and election campaigns into U.S.-style money shows. Therefore, the reforms should include clear spending caps on campaigns both at the national and constituency levels. Such a process would perforce mean that constituency organisations would be subject to regulations similar to those at the national level.

In other words, they would have to report on who contributes to them, how much and how they spend their money. That would help to lessen the possibility of big donors shifting their financing from the central organisation to constituency parties, similar to what the Americans have been able to achieve with political action committees.

Robust constituency reporting would also have the advantage of limiting the possibility of the moneyed individual and/or the drug don throwing money at a local candidate without being noticed.

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