Gail Alexan­der

Cam­paign fi­nanc­ing is­sues are a blot on the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process and must be ad­dressed as soon as pos­si­ble, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr James Arm­strong has said."The ev­i­dence is quite cur­rent and it dis­turbs me sig­nif­i­cant­ly," Arm­strong said in yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate.He said he had be­come very con­cerned about cam­paign fi­nanc­ing in re­cent weeks. In the way peo­ple came to pow­er, he said, it seemed clear "the more corn you have, is the more fowl you go­ing to feed."

Arm­strong urged that cam­paign re­form should be placed on the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form agen­da. He said se­nior coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal had point­ed out loop­holes where some­one could be spend­ing mil­lions and not re­al­ly ac­count for it."This is a blot on our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process we tout so proud­ly and it must be ad­dressed as soon as pos­si­ble," he added.

Arm­strong ex­pressed con­cern about the To­ba­go leg­is­la­tion promised and pro­nounced on by Gov­ern­ment dur­ing Jan­u­ary's To­ba­go elec­tion and said he was con­cerned about whether T&T was achieve­ing eq­ui­ty and fair­play with gov­er­nance, es­pe­cial­ly fol­low­ing the To­ba­go polls.

Apart from the To­ba­go leg­is­la­tion for in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment, he said, state­ments were made about de­vo­lu­tion of some pow­ers and in­creased al­lo­ca­tion: "I'm re­al­ly sur­prised all this has died down and we are hard­ly hear­ing any­thing about it. This has not, in my view, pro­gressed in the way we an­tic­i­pat­ed. I will re­quest and urge it be brought to the ta­ble again and giv­en ad­e­quate con­sid­er­a­tion," he said.

Arm­strong said T&T has a free press which he "quite en­joys," and things that were aired in T&T by the me­dia could not have been pub­lished in some of the oth­er places he had lived.He said Gov­ern­ment need­ed to con­sid­er the trans­fer of re­sources and funds to lo­cal gov­ern­ment to im­prove the sys­tem.