Tony Fras­er

If the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, all seg­ments of it, were to once again pump hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in­to the cam­paigns of po­lit­i­cal par­ties in the sched­uled next three elec­tions, and do so with­out a struc­tured, le­gal and trans­par­ent sys­tem in place to reg­u­late and mon­i­tor those con­tri­bu­tions (in­vest­ments) then it would be guilty of the most egre­gious acts of cor­rup­tion con­ceiv­able.

Sure­ly the ex­pe­ri­ence of the last 15 years, tak­en to new low­er lev­els over the last three years, should in­di­cate to the le­git­i­mate busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty that it can­not plead ig­no­rance of the in­her­ent­ly cor­rupt na­ture of cam­paign fi­nance.

I re­peat the quote of Re­pub­lic Bank chair­man Ronald Har­ford for those who missed it: "By fund­ing these par­ties, one may say, on how things have turned out af­ter mul­ti­ple elec­tions, that we are in­deed aid­ing and abet­ting the wheels of cor­rup­tion as there is no ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in who con­tributes and more par­tic­u­lar­ly on how these funds have been used."

If, notwith­stand­ing all of the very clear link­ages be­tween par­ty fi­nanc­ing and cor­rup­tion, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty pro­ceeds as usu­al, then as a group it would have to re­main qui­et when a gov­ern­ment makes pay­ments from the Trea­sury to its po­lit­i­cal in­vestors and en­gage in nepo­tism and trib­al pa­tron­age in the state sec­tor.

In such cir­cum­stances, the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty would have to con­clude that hav­ing a gov­ern­ment in of­fice to favour its po­lit­i­cal in­vestors is what the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is all about: pa­tron­age and in­sid­er deal­ing.

Equal­ly guilty of pro­mot­ing cor­rup­tion would be the trade union move­ment, the NGOs, the re­li­gious bod­ies and oth­er so­cial groups and in­sti­tu­tions, if they do not ag­i­tate and mo­bilise the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion to ac­tion to en­sure leg­is­la­tion is passed to pre­vent the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and the na­tion­al gov­ern­ment from favour­ing their in­vestors to the detri­ment of qual­i­ty gov­er­nance and fur­ther cor­rupt­ing the so­cial mores of the so­ci­ety.

Not free of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty are the vot­ers who make up the EBC list of elec­tors. They must come to an un­der­stand­ing that many of their an­ces­tors paid with their lives to se­cure the fran­chise. They in this gen­er­a­tion must not sell that right and sa­cred rite-of-pas­sage for rum and roti, free jer­seys, the trin­kets usu­al­ly hand­ed out and non-think­ing trib­al al­le­giances.

The elec­torate must recog­nise that when po­lit­i­cal in­vestors buy in­to the par­ties what they are ef­fec­tive­ly do­ing is dis­en­fran­chis­ing the or­di­nary vot­ers in favour of them­selves, the spe­cial in­ter­est groups.Once up­on a time the colo­nial ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sert­ed that on­ly the prop­er­tied class­es, the mer­chants, the planters and the pro­fes­sion­als had the ca­pac­i­ty and there­fore the right to de­ter­mine who should gov­ern.

To stand idly by and al­low the po­lit­i­cal in­vestors, the prop­er­tied class­es of to­day, to con­trol the poli­cies and pro­grammes of the gov­ern­ment is tan­ta­mount to hand­ing back the fran­chise.As has been demon­strat­ed, when par­ties get in­to gov­ern­ment, the elec­torate and the mass of the pop­u­la­tion are left on the mar­gins to "rant, rave and mis­be­have" while the gov­ern­ment in of­fice does as it pleas­es.

Mis­be­hav­iour could mean the pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion to al­low in­vestors to walk free of crim­i­nal charges; the hand-out of con­tracts to po­lit­i­cal in­vestors; an im­moral (at least) usurpa­tion of state-sec­tor re­sources to dis­trib­ute largesse in a bla­tant­ly cor­rupt man­ner to in­vestors, sup­port­ers and the tribe–ei­ther one. All of this done while those who vot­ed for pro­grammes and poli­cies for re­gion­al and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment are kept short of vi­tal ser­vices and de­pen­dent on ten-day tem­po­rary jobs.

The re­al­i­ty is that the com­ing of na­tion­al par­ties and na­tion­al pol­i­tics has re­sult­ed in the mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion of the elec­torate and so­ci­ety by a klep­to­crat­ic elite and their po­lit­i­cal col­lab­o­ra­tors.The so­ci­ety feels help­less in the face of the pow­er of par­ty and gov­ern­ment. We have to await the Car­ni­val sea­son for the ca­lyp­son­ian to give vic­ar­i­ous voice to our state of help­less­ness.

We find suc­cour in the sto­ries that in­dict this or that gov­ern­ment for cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ty and this or that prime min­is­ter and cab­i­net for do­ing as they please, in­clud­ing telling le­git­i­mate voic­es of protest against cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ty to "move on" or that "the Prime Min­is­ter has spo­ken."What is be­ing ad­vo­cat­ed here is a trans­for­ma­tion of that colo­nial con­di­tion of learnt help­less­ness.

The so­ci­ety–elec­torate, busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, work­ers' or­gan­i­sa­tion, NGOs and re­li­gious bod­ies can­not con­tin­ue in this state of im­po­tence while po­lit­i­cal par­ties and gov­ern­ments, made up of a small, priv­i­leged mi­nor­i­ty, con­trol the pow­er and the wealth of the coun­try while they cor­rupt the soul of the na­tion.

Ac­tion as ad­vo­cat­ed above amounts to tak­ing back from po­lit­i­cal par­ties and gov­ern­ments the pow­er that is right­ful­ly vest­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion in the State: the peo­ple and their in­sti­tu­tions.It can­not be that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple con­tin­ues to re­main bound on the side­lines and cap­tive by a small group of politi­cians and their se­lect­ed friends and rel­a­tives.Gov­ern­ment and gov­er­nance in to­day's world can­not be ef­fi­ca­cious­ly achieved with­out peo­ple and their in­sti­tu­tions hav­ing a ma­jor say in how they are gov­erned.