President Bharrat Jagdeo says the administration supports calls for campaign financing reform but cautions that any model adopted locally should ensure a level playing field for all political parties.
Briefing the media on Friday at the Office of the President, Jagdeo said he has always supported the need for the reforms. His remarks follow calls from opposition parliamentarians who have also voiced their support for reform, though they were primarily concerned with curbing the incumbent’s access to state funds during election campaigns. “We have to be careful that we don’t adopt a model that leads to a lot of disadvantage being heaped upon those who play by the rules. If some play by the rules of the game and others don’t then you can place parties at significant disadvantage,” Jagdeo stated.
He added that an act needs to be crafted that recognises all of the possible loopholes and takes measures to address them to ensure the parties operate on a level playing field. The president was at the time addressing claims that Guyana has an “elected dictatorship,” a charge he dismissed saying his government was committed to an “open society.”
In this vein, Jagdeo reiterated the intention to have freedom of information legislation enacted and the radio waves freed up. “We are working to have in this session [of Parliament] the Freedom of Information Act passed; it will be passed in this session. That gives our citizens greater access to information in the public domain. I’ve also said that we will liberalise the radio monopoly that the state has so that people will be subjected to greater divergence of opinion,” Jagdeo stated.
According to the president, “this country has been moving forward our rights agenda at a pace that few countries have in this hemisphere that I know of.”
Opposition MPs have called for the introduction of laws to monitor an incumbent government’s utilisation of public funds during election periods.
In response to the president’s remarks, AFC MP Sheila Holder, who disagrees with the position that addressing campaign financing reform should be dealt with at a later date, said the government must act if it is serious about “leveling the playing field” for parties. Prior to the parliamentary recess, Holder submitted a motion to the National Assembly in which she seeks to have government adhere to its international obligations, modernize the law and ensure that it is enforced by the Guyana Elec-tions Commission (GECOM), which has responsibility for regulating elections.
Additionally, Holder criticized the president for casting aspersions on other parties, in light of his failure to push the revamp of the laws. “He has had it within his power to do what I am doing,” she said, adding that instead the head-of-state has sought to make associations between political parties and drug traffickers in a bid “to sully them the way his has been.”
In 1990, amendments were made to the Representation of the People Act limiting personal campaign expenses to $25,000 per candidate and a maximum of $50,000 multiplied by a maximum number of 53 from a total number of 65 candidates for each contesting political party. The exchange rate at the time was US$1 to $45.
Holder said the legislation is no longer relevant. She added that if the president is really serious about reform, he would also support proper public financing for political parties as well as restraints on the use of state resources, including the state media. She noted that repeated attempts by the AFC to secure airtime on the state media have been unsuccessful. She said even attempts to pay for airtime were met with the claim that time slots on state media have been booked until year end.
Holder has argued that the policy of parties raising campaign financing from private citizens had contributed to the incumbent government misusing its executive influence to favour select private contractors who had contributed heavily to their election campaigns. She added that there was also a great financial disparity in favour of the government in the quantity of funds ploughed into election campaigns, compared with that spent by contesting opposition parties.
Recently, GAP/ROAR MP Everall Franklin said campaign finance reform was needed to govern the projects that an incumbent administration was allowed to conduct leading up to elections. He said the issue would have to be included under the wider umbrella of party campaign expenses. “It also has to come with some rules for incumbents; what they could do in an election year because a lot of projects sometimes are just kept back and doled out in an election year to sway public opinion,” he said.
However, Franklin noted that campaign financing was a complex issue that needed sufficient time to be dealt with and as such should be addressed after the elections.
Chief Whip for the main opposition PNCR Lance Carberry acknowledged that campaign financing was a matter of transparency but he added that there were more pressing matters to be dealt with. Carberry said GECOM should be taking the lead on the issue, since it had the mandate of regulating the conduct of elections.
