(Trinidad Express) Head of the Organisation of American States (OAS) José Miguel Insulza has offered assistance to T&T to tackle campaign financing. Insulza made the offer while delivering the feature address, titled Latin America and the Caribbean: Good News with many Challenges, at an open lecture hosted by the St Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies on Tuesday night.
Elections and Boundaries Commission chairman Dr Norbert Masson, who was in the audience, said he hoped the Government would take up the OAS’ offer in drafting legislation dealing with political campaign financing. Insulza said now was the time for countries to implement very clear legislation to deal with campaign financing and warned that if it was not properly dealt with it could undermine a country’s democracy.
“Political financing has become an increasing concern to all our democracies. We must have rules to avoid the pitfalls,” Insulza said. He said while Latin American and the Caribbean region have been faced with challenges, including organised crime, all was not lost as there have been improvements in the areas of poverty reduction and infrastructural development.
Pro vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Prof Clement Sankat, who also spoke, hoped the OAS would focus on the Caribbean region even more in the coming years. A stronger Carib-bean could only be good news in the quest to make the OAS stronger, Sankat added. Sankat said UWI had a proud tradition of serving all the English-speaking Caribbean countries for over 65 years and was also committed to serving the wider region, including Central and South America.
To demonstrate this commitment, Sankat added, UWI had approved “ACS initiative”, a new tuition fee structure for non-UWI contributing countries of the wider Latin American and Caribbean region, particularly countries from South America and Central America. He said: “We at the UWI St Augustine Campus therefore look forward to welcoming more students from the wider Caribbean basin, beyond the 17 contributing countries…countries such as Suriname, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Panama, Ecuador, Brazil, Chile, Cuba and Costa Rica just to name after. “We see these students as essential, as they too contribute to the development and advancement of the Caribbean and Latin American region.”
