With general elections in about two weeks, the issue of campaign finance is raising its head again, with Chairman of Integrity Group Barbados Andy Armstrong expressing concern that no legislation to deal with this matter has yet been passed.
The concern is that entities can use money from large financial campaign contributions to influence candidates and governments. In fact, the position of the Integrity Group Barbados, which has been lobbying for campaign finance legislation for several years, is that this legislation is critically important.
Armstrong said hope was given in 2018 when the Mia Mottley-led Barbados Labour Party (BLP) pledged in its manifesto to introduce election campaign finance reform. However, three years onward and another election quickly approaching, such reform is yet to get off the ground.
During an interview with Barbados TODAY, Armstrong said his entity was hoping that whichever party wins the January 19 polls, campaign finance legislation will be one of the first pieces of law enacted in the next term.
“I don’t think you will get a lot of businesspeople or even private individuals who are going to voluntarily tell you how much they donated and to which parties. I think they have to be required to do it by law,” he said.
For the Integrity Group Barbados, a major concern was the breeding of corruption through campaign finance that went unchecked. Armstrong believes that if someone gives a large sum of money to a politician, there is a possibility they would expect to recoup that money somehow.
“So, there are a number of ways that could happen. There is a Public Procurement Bill which has passed the House and not the Senate yet, which could perhaps curb some of that because it will require before there are any large projects, they go for an open bid. . . .
“But having said that, even now Barbados has fiscal rules [which] require that and they’re often circumvented. So, even if you have the law, it doesn’t always prevent the people involved from finding a reason why they could circumvent the law in, let’s say, emergency situations. It might be okay if Parliament decided it was an emergency but when specific ministers might decide that we are in an emergency situation now so there is no need to go to tender, if those kinds of things happen then there is much more of a likelihood that something wrong will happen in the tendering process and that the person who has the best bid may not win it,” Armstrong added.
In recent years, some other Caribbean nations like Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago have introduced campaign finance reform legislation. In Jamaica, reform was introduced in 2017 as part of that island’s 2030 goal of transparency and accountability in governance.
Starting last year, political parties in Trinidad must file an annual return showing where they got money from and where they spent it.
Armstrong noted: “As ordinary citizens, when we deposit money with a bank, usually we have to go through so much paperwork to prove that the funds weren’t illegal, so surely you would expect that political parties would want to be very sure where they were getting their funds from and make sure that they were coming from legitimate sources.”
The group wants the antiquated Representation of the People Act, the only piece of legislation that currently addresses election expenses, to be updated, as well as the long-promised Freedom of Information Act, which Armstrong deemed as “critical”, to be passed. He believes that if the latter is introduced it would be easy to see who received the big contracts from government, who tendered, at what price, and then the public could scrutinise any perceived suspicious activity.
“I am not saying that the least expensive is always the best but where you see a massive difference in price and a more expensive one has got it, then I think there needs to be a proper explanation as to why,” Armstrong added. (KC)
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