Vernon Daley

Prime Minister Bruce Golding said last week that the Government is ready to enact legislation governing the financing of political parties as soon as it receives recommendations from the country's election officials.

The matter has been around for some time now and it's good we are nearing a conclusion. Still, we need to make sure the public gets a real opportunity to discuss the specific recommendations when they are put forward by the Electoral Commission.

Those discussions should extend beyond the usual joint select parliamentary committee where the views of the public are sometimes solicited. The issue must be taken to people where they are - whether in their communities or directly in their homes via the media. The recent review of the country's defamation laws benefited from this approach and there is no good reason why we shouldn't use it again.

I have no idea what recommendations the election officials will make but I hope they do not suggest any upper limits on the contributions that may be made to political parties and their candidates from private sources. The emphasis should not be on limits but rather on disclosure.

Infrastructure

If John Brown is able to secure an unlimited amount of money from any one person or group who believes fervently that he should hold public office because of the good he could do in a community, I can't see any reason to prohibit that. What we should be concerned about is who is offering the money so we can apply the appropriate scrutiny.

In election campaigns, upper limits on funding and spending have the potential to favour those who are better known and have an existing political infrastructure in place. In our quest to root out 'corruption', we must seek to avoid distorting the political process.

Politics, in many ways, is no different from business. Political parties are about marketing ideas in the same way that firms market goods and services. In that fierce marketplace, sometimes a party has to do a great deal of spending on its marketing campaign to get people to buy into its vision. Having good ideas is not enough.

Without the massive funding that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) obviously had in the last election, it would still be languishing on the opposition benches in Parliament. Had there been contribution and spending limits the JLP would not have been able, to compete with an entrenched Government fortified by a popular leader who had built up great admiration across the country over many years.

In the United States, Barack Obama has largely been able to compete with Hillary Clinton because of the huge amount of funding which he has been able to raise on-line. She is almost an institution while he is an unknown. He has been able to erase that deficit not just by his message but by his money.

Dreadful Democrats

Speaking of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, I find the raw populism with which they are talking up their Iraq strategy frightening. Both Democrats have been running on the idea that they will end the war in Iraq and yank out United States troops.

However, they don't seem too concerned that an abrupt withdrawal would perhaps lead to greater sectarian violence in that country and more anguish for the Iraqi people. The US went into Iraq uninvited and they need to stick it out and not run because more than 4,000 body bags have been sent back home.

The reciprocal price of war is blood but Americans have never been willing to make that purchase without remorse.

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