Less than $400 million (US$2 million) was spent by the AFC for the May 11 general and regional elections, according to party treasurer Dominic Gaskin who said that while accounting for funds spent by the party is almost complete, they are waiting on APNU.
Prior to the elections, the General Secretaries of both APNU and the AFC had promised that funding for their campaigns would be transparent and that their agreement caters for a complete audit of campaign funding to be made public by the first week in August of this year. “The campaign we are promising will be clean and I will also promise you that funding will be transparent,” General Secretary of the AFC David Patterson had told Stabroek News. “By 12 weeks after the election, we will have a complete audit of campaign funding…yes it will be made public. We have nothing to hide… I want to know, will the PPP do the same?” he added.
The deadline has passed but the information has not been made public and questioned recently on the matter, Minister of Governance Raphael Trotman told Stabroek News that “I gotta check with the accountant,” which, according to him, he would do as soon as he gets a chance to. He added that a review of the elections is on and as soon as there is a report, this will be made public.
When pressed for a date as to when this would be done, he said that he cannot push the people doing the report and has to speak to President David Granger about it. Prior to the elections, Granger had said that the parties had worked out a formula which would see APNU being responsible for 60% of the financing for the campaign and AFC 40%.
Trotman said that he would hope that that report will be released and responded “no comment” when asked whether this would be done by the end of the year.
Meantime, when asked about his pledge regarding the campaign funding, Patterson directed Stabroek News to AFC treasurer and now Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin. Patterson added that they have nothing to hide and the promise will be kept.
Gaskin told Stabroek News that the audit of the campaign accounts has not started but they have begun the compilation of the accounts. “The accounting work is almost complete on the AFC side,” he said. “I have impeccable accounts, records of every cent spent but we still have to do it jointly.” He said that they are now waiting on APNU and it would be up to that party as to when the report would be released. Asked whether he has told APNU that his side is nearly completed, he said that it is an ongoing discussion.
“I’m ready,” he said.
The issue of transparency in campaign financing has been raised numerous times in the past including by international organisations such as the Carter Center, the Organisation of American States and the Commonwealth.
In terms of the campaign cost, Gaskin said that this amounted to “not more than $2 million US.”
Meantime, as it relates to local government elections (LGE), Gaskin noted that an election is funded with what is available and it has to do with whether their sponsors are as interested in LGE as in national elections. In terms of whether the AFC has money for the LGE campaign, he said: “We never have money, we have to go out and raise money.”
He said that it was possible that a campaign for the LGE could cost more than the general elections “because it’s actually 71 separate mini-elections” where campaigning is being done. He, however, noted that he has not done an analysis yet.
In terms of safeguards to ensure that state funds are not used to campaign for LGE, Gaskin pointed out that the APNU+AFC coalition had campaigned against this.
“I think the safeguards lies in the public’s awareness that this actually is not right and I think we’ve had this discussion now for a few years and people are a lot more aware now that the government in power doesn’t own everything. It’s not our vehicle to go campaigning with, it’s not our plane…I think that’s the best safeguard if people see us abusing the trappings of the state to go campaigning, I think it will send hopefully a message to them” and they will call out the coalition, he said.
He emphasised that he hopes that the public would call them out if this occurs as, if the public does not expect good governance, then the public will never get it.
Pressed on whether the public would see, for example, him campaigning in government-owned vehicles as opposed to his personal or party vehicle, Gaskin said that while he would like to say no, as a minister, he is required to be at different places at different times “and everything you say can be construed as campaigning because you are getting a message out that one assumes is tailored to make you and your government look good. So from that standpoint I wouldn’t want to go to an event in my capacity as minister and then have you say ‘well you said you wouldn’t be campaigning with the ministry’s vehicle,’ so I guess there’s a fine line there and I think you know it when you see it when someone is going out and perhaps wearing the party colours and waving the party flag.”
