Melis­sa Doughty

Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) chair­man Dr Nor­bert Mas­son has urged the coun­try's po­lit­i­cal par­ties to "bite the bul­let" and to be­gin the process to frame and en­act leg­is­la­tion to be­gin par­ty cam­paign re­form as well par­ty reg­is­tra­tion.

Mas­son, one of the four guest speak­ers at the open­ing of a sym­po­sium on the reg­is­tra­tion and fund­ing of po­lit­i­cal par­ties held on Wednes­day at the Queen's Park Oval's Cen­tu­ry Ball­room, Port-of-Spain, told the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, "Dare to go where no oth­er gov­ern­ment has gone be­fore...bite the bul­let."He not­ed re­peat­ed at­tempts to have leg­is­la­tion de­vel­oped and en­act­ed (in 2006 Gan­ga Singh brought a mo­tion to Par­lia­ment; Prof Ramesh De­osaran did so in 2009; and in 2011 the EBC made rec­om­men­da­tions).

Mas­son said he had con­fi­dence, how­ev­er, af­ter In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor He­len Dray­ton brought a mo­tion in the Sen­ate on No­vem­ber 26.Pi­lot­ing her mo­tion, Dray­ton said $300 mil­lion had been spent on cam­paigns be­tween May 2010 and now.Mas­son along with vice-chair of the T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) Dion Ab­dool, UN res­i­dent co-or­di­na­tor and UNDP rep­re­sen­ta­tive Richard Ble­witt, and Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Ger­ard Lat­ulippe all spoke of the im­por­tance of leg­is­la­tion for cam­paign fund­ing re­form in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety.

The is­sue, the var­i­ous speak­ers not­ed, was not unique to T&T but a glob­al mat­ter. The sym­po­sium was a joint ini­tia­tive among the EBC, UN, the UN of­fice on drugs and crime and the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion.In his ad­dress to the au­di­ence, which in­clud­ed Dray­ton, Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion De­vant Ma­haraj, and In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Ken Gor­don, Mas­son called for not on­ly cam­paign fi­nanc­ing and par­ty fund­ing to be ad­dressed but al­so par­ty reg­is­tra­tion.

"Of the process­es to which I have just re­ferred, those in T&T which in­clude elec­tion laws, do not meet best-prac­tice cri­te­ria or bench­marks, most con­spic­u­ous­ly on two grounds, reg­is­tra­tion or po­lit­i­cal par­ties and over­sight of cam­paign fi­nanc­ing."

Mas­son said the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) had de­vel­oped mod­el leg­is­la­tion to ad­dress the mat­ter and had as­sist­ed coun­tries in the re­gion and Latin Amer­i­ca to im­prove the qual­i­ty of their elec­toral man­age­ment process­es. He high­light­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion's suc­cess in help­ing coun­tries such as Pana­ma, Pe­ru and Cos­ta Ri­ca ad­dress mat­ters such as the reg­is­tra­tion of vot­ers, po­lit­i­cal par­ties, and elec­toral lo­gis­tics.

He de­scribed cur­rent leg­isla­tive con­di­tions in T&T as rudi­men­ta­ry in the case of reg­is­tra­tion of po­lit­i­cal par­ties and "a dead let­ter" in the case of cam­paign fi­nanc­ing.Al­though the mat­ters have been dis­cussed in the re­gion, he said the re­gion was still one of the few in the world with­out leg­is­la­tion.

Many might be sur­prised to know that no de­f­i­n­i­tion ex­ist­ed for a po­lit­i­cal par­ty in the Con­sti­tu­tion. He said all that was nec­es­sary was a let­ter to the com­mis­sion de­clar­ing that one was the leader of a par­ty and ap­ply­ing for a sym­bol for it. On­ly the sym­bol is reg­is­tered.Po­lit­i­cal par­ties were cor­po­rate bod­ies–a busi­ness. He said it should be nec­es­sary for par­ties to meet cer­tain re­quire­ments be­fore be­ing reg­is­tered, for ex­am­ple hav­ing a con­sti­tu­tion.

T&T, he said, was a typ­i­cal ex­am­ple of a West­min­ster-mod­el coun­try where there was an ab­sence of any pub­lic sub­ven­tion to po­lit­i­cal par­ties and pro­vi­sions for dis­clo­sure of fund­ing were lim­it­ed to the sub­mis­sion of state­ments of cam­paign ex­pen­di­ture.He said from re­search done part­ly by the com­mis­sion's com­mu­ni­ca­tions staff, it was es­ti­mat­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly $25 mil­lion was spent on TV, ra­dio and print cam­paigns in the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion and that fig­ure had grown con­sid­er­ably since then.

The Law Com­mis­sion since 2000 asked for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on par­ty reg­is­tra­tion and fi­nanc­ing. Though late, he said, such a con­sul­ta­tion be­gan on Thurs­day."This is a start," he said.Mas­son al­so said the sym­po­sium marked an im­por­tant wa­ter­shed in the evo­lu­tion of the EBC.