Two political analysts have agreed that the public declaration of who is funding political parties is more important than the just released candidates spending.
A published advertisement in last week’s SUNDAY SUN revealed that combined, the ruling Barbados Labour Party’s 30 candidates spent almost three times the amount of their main opposition the Democratic Labour Party’s $565 929.97 total. The Return of Election Expenses list released by the Electoral and Boundaries Commission (EBC) shows that Member of Parliament for Christ Church East Central and Minister of Finance Ryan Straughn had the highest total of any candidate spending $103 317.12 of the BLP’s overall $1 555 108.07 in the February 11 General Election.
When contacted for a reaction political analysts Professor Cynthia Barrow-Giles and Devaron Bruce said the emphasis should be on revealing sources of party campaign financing in the interest of transparency and good governance, with both questioning the capacity of the EBC in any event to verify the individual spending by candidates in their bid to win a seat in Parliament.
Barrow-Giles, whose expertise is in constitutional governance and politics said that Barbados’ legal framework for the conduct of elections in terms of political finance was one of the weakest globally.
“That is primarily because there are few limitations on who can donate, whether corporate or individuals, domestic or foreign and that includes foreign governments. The spending limits are clear under the law and unfortunately, we must accept what is accounted for by the candidates but I do not think that the EBC has the capacity to verify the accounts and therefore it makes a nonsense of a seemingly useful legal requirement,” she observed.
More importantly, she said, was the fact that though it appeared that there was a very unequal playing field in the reported spending, it did not exceed the legal ceiling for the constituencies.
“However, there is this huge problem precisely because the political parties are not required to report election campaign finances. All we have here is a candidate accounting, not the party, which would be more revealing and perhaps disturbing.
“So perhaps BLP candidates spent more than three times as much as the DLP’s, what is missing is what the parties spent on activities on behalf of the candidates and what the parties spent on election workers, election rallies, posters and other paraphernalia, advertising in the print and non-print media and the hiring of pollsters and PR consultants. These costs are incalculable and important and what we do not see is the entire financial structure of the campaign,” she said.
Likewise, Bruce believed there is a need to strengthen the integrity framework in relation to knowing the funding sources of political parties.
“There is the old adage who pays the piper calls the tune, and persons who are proponents of a solid national integrity system do believe that there should be some emphasis on campaign finance and declaring the sources of funds. This is particularly relevant to political parties which can be quite opaque when it comes to their funding sources,” he said.
The list of candidates’ returns held no surprise for Bruce since, he said, campaigning and politics were expensive undertakings. However, while political parties might not need to have a cap put on their spending, the source of the contributions, especially large ones, should be revealed, he added.
The issue, Barrow-Giles insisted, was about parties and elections where the law is silent and presently it was not possible to understand political money by focusing on the candidates’ spending.
“Unfortunately that is what the current legal framework invites or limits us to and this is far more critical than what the existing law requires. A better question should be how much did each party spend. We will not get the truth until the law catches up to current global standards,” she noted.
On the face of it, the legally required candidates report created a false impression of transparency in the system when “in truth there
is little to no transparency in spending on elections”, Barrow-Giles pointed out.
“Candidates’ apparent transparency does not equate to transparency of the system of money in politics,” she said.
