Tony Fras­er

"These are mat­ters (cam­paign fi­nance re­form) that ob­vi­ous­ly re­quire some na­tion­al de­bate and dis­cus­sion. But per­mit me to say that the per­cep­tion that those who con­tributed have some sway was an­swered by the PM on her re­turn from her state vis­it to Cana­da, when she quite right­ly point­ed out that the on­ly peo­ple that have sway over her are the cit­i­zen­ry and the elec­torate...the per­cep­tions about po­lit­i­cal donors some­times they are some­what ex­ag­ger­at­ed and not en­tire­ly cor­rect."

–At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Anand Ram­lo­gan

Post Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence May 2, 2013

I am firm­ly of the view that the present con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form dis­cus­sion/ex­er­cise is a farce.It is a farce be­cause on yet an­oth­er oc­ca­sion in a run-up to a gen­er­al elec­tion, the gov­ern­ment of the day has ini­ti­at­ed dis­cus­sion on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form to give the im­pres­sion of an im­mi­nent change in the con­sti­tu­tion­al ba­sis for elec­tion and gov­er­nance.From the above re­sponse of the AG on one crit­i­cal el­e­ment of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, the in­ten­tion is to keep the mass­es talk­ing with­out an end in sight.

Start­ing with the 1987 Hy­atali Com­mis­sion to the present meet­ings, not one of the re­form dis­cus­sions has pro­duced any­thing ap­proach­ing a se­ri­ous at­tempt to re­form the 1976 per­son­al con­sti­tu­tion of Er­ic Williams.The core of the ob­jec­tive of cam­paign-fi­nance re­form is to es­tab­lish a trans­par­ent sys­tem to gov­ern the con­tri­bu­tions by es­pe­cial­ly busi­ness ex­ec­u­tives and cor­po­ra­tions to the cam­paigns of po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

"The abil­i­ty to spend mil­lions of dol­lars to get their mes­sage across has not added to the ef­fi­cien­cy or in­tegri­ty of politi­cians," stat­ed the T&T Guardian in ed­i­to­r­i­al com­ment last week."In fact it has done the re­verse," said the news­pa­per. It has left the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and their par­ties "with oblig­a­tions to the se­cret bene­fac­tors who have con­tributed the mil­lions up­on mil­lions of dol­lars to fund such mas­sive cam­paigns and who ex­pect to be paid back in kind...with gov­ern­ment con­tracts."

The erup­tion over the pre­ma­ture and de­cep­tive pro­mul­ga­tion of Sec­tion 34 of the In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings Act has been about re­turn pay­ments to in­vestors.For Ram­lo­gan, in­sti­tut­ing a struc­tured and le­gal sys­tem to guard against in­flu­ence ped­dling "re­quires some na­tion­al de­bate and dis­cus­sion."

Maybe the AG has not been pay­ing at­ten­tion but de­bate and dis­cus­sion on this is­sue have been go­ing on for 15 years. Pre­dictably, the ma­jor par­ties have not even ac­knowl­edged the cul­ture of cor­rupt prac­tices spawned by po­lit­i­cal in­vestors."Per­cep­tions are ex­ag­ger­at­ed,"about in­flu­ence ped­dling by po­lit­i­cal in­vestors, says Ram­lo­gan.

In to­tal con­tra­dic­tion to such a propo­si­tion has been the in­dict­ment by each par­ty that the oth­er is be­ing fund­ed by drug deal­ers and po­lit­i­cal in­vestors in­tend­ing to draw down on the Trea­sury post-elec­tion.

Bas­deo Pan­day re­cent­ly said on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion that a con­trac­tor/in­vestor of the UNC said to him that dur­ing the cam­paign for the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion he ad­vanced $60 mil­lion to a UNC par­ty of­fi­cial to fund the cam­paign. What would be in­ter­est­ing is to find out how many gov­ern­ment con­tracts and at what cost has the con­trac­tor/in­vest­ed re­ceived since 2010.

"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"–Chair­man of Re­pub­lic Bank Ronald Har­ford, speak­ing with far more can­dour than the AG, to his col­leagues at a func­tion of the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.

In the role of aca­d­e­m­ic au­thor/politi­cian, Win­ston Dook­er­an char­ac­teris­es par­ty pol­i­tics and gov­er­nance in his book Pow­er, Pol­i­tics and Per­for­mance as the search for and de­pen­dence of all on the "Pot of Gold.""Bribery, lack of trans­paren­cy, cor­rup­tion, se­cre­tive­ness, theft and a cul­ture in which every­one and every­thing has a price..."Dook­er­an ac­cu­rate­ly ex­plains the re­fusal of all par­ties to act to es­tab­lish a le­gal struc­ture to gov­ern the con­tri­bu­tions to par­ty cam­paigns.

"Since the po­lit­i­cal par­ty is all pow­er­ful, it will not pro­mote strong gov­ern­men­tal in­sti­tu­tions..."In­stead of seek­ing to es­tab­lish laws and reg­u­la­tions to gov­ern cam­paign fi­nance, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment who should be most fo­cused on a le­gal and in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work to tack­le cor­rup­tion, wants the elec­torate and the coun­try to de­pend on the word of a politi­cian as op­posed to laws and reg­u­la­tions.

He us­es the Prime Min­is­ter's state­ment on the is­sue of strate­gi­cal­ly-placed in­vestors hav­ing in­flu­ence to sup­port his po­si­tion: "She quite right­ly point­ed out that the on­ly peo­ple that have sway over her are the cit­i­zen­ry and the elec­torate."The con­tempt politi­cians have for the in­tel­li­gence of the elec­torate and so­ci­ety is amaz­ing.

As this col­umn has con­sis­tent­ly point­ed out, politi­cians will nev­er vol­un­tar­i­ly cede the pow­er which gives them the whip hand over the cit­i­zen­ry. There­fore, the PNM, like the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship/UNC, will not en­cour­age the es­tab­lish­ment of a trans­par­ent sys­tem for cam­paign fi­nanc­ing.It is the elec­torate that must in­sist that be­fore the three elec­tions to come, a trans­par­ent sys­tem must be es­tab­lished to mon­i­tor con­tri­bu­tions to par­ties.