By Section 108 of the Representation of the People Act, the election agent of each party/group of candidates must forward to the Chief Election Officer a declaration of their party’s expenses by 35 days following the declaration of the result of the national/regional elections. The returns for the 2 March 2020 elections have long been due but to date those results have not reached the public domain as they should have (SN: 26/10/2020)! The declaration of elections expenses is only one aspect of transparency in elections campaign financing that is essential to protect the integrity of elections by preventing large donors from capturing and using political parties for their own ends in liberal democratic countries. Thus, laws requiring the disclosure of campaign contributions and spending are on the agenda in almost every such country.
In 2011, a special select committee of the National Assembly was established to consider national and other laws, regulations and experiences with political campaign financing and to make recommendations. The committee concluded that the issue of campaign financing is very important and that the government that took office after the 2011 elections should give serious thought to passing the necessary legislation. Of course, such laws could also be used to make the electoral system more open by providing public financing, encouraging the participation of small parties and various gender, ethnic and other groups, etc. So, the committee also recommended that the system be designed to allow affirmative action to ensure increased political participation and representation of women, youths, hinterland communities and disabled people. Upon considering the report of the committee, I said that in my view, the issue is of sufficient importance to require broad national discourse, and since the opposition was absent from parliament at the time, there was no parliamentary consensus on the report that was presented (Future Notes, SN: 05/10/2011).
There is usually strong resistance from the established political parties and their corporate backers to the introduction of campaign financing rules and although various persons and institutions have continued to demand more comprehensive legislation, politicians on all sides have been making sceptical remarks about the introduction of it and not much has changed as a result of the committee’s report. The Transparency Institute of Guyana Inc observed ‘Political parties and politicians have over time managed to convey recognition of the need for and value of political financing legislation while consistently avoiding responsibility for addressing the matter substantively’(SN:26/01/ 2018).
A cursory assessment of the March 2020 elections suggests that the cost was relatively very large and this is not unusual: the ballooning cost and influence of money on electioneering where regulations are nonexistent or insufficient is fairly common. Indeed, this situation has even given rise to demands for constitutional reform in the USA and many countries have attempted to curb elections expenditure.
For instance, the yet to be completed 2020 election in the USA is projected to have cost US$11b – far more than the US$4.6b it cost in 2000. Campaign funds have historically been donated directly to representatives but in 2010 the Supreme Court ruled that restrictions on independent campaign spending by corporations and labour unions is a restriction on free speech and therefore unconstitutional. This ruling opened the door for corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns by the formation of Super Pacs.
Comparing the situation before the court’s ruling in 2008 with that of the next elections in 2012, there was an almost 600% increase in independent spending and that which was US$1.4b in 2016 has already grown to US$1.6b in 2020. (https://theconversation.com/the-scale-of-us-election-spending-explained-in-five-graphs-130651). As Richard Esenburg predicted, the combination of the various US Supreme Court decisions may be to ‘render public financing systems, at least as a device to reduce substantially the influence of private money on elections, effectively futile’ (Richard M. Esenberg, “The Lonely Death of Public Campaign Financing” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 2010).
However, other countries have successfully capped election spending. In the United Kingdom, limits are set at £30,000 per seat contested by each party. This means that parties that contest all 650 parliamentary seats are limited to roughly £19.5m: significantly lower than in the US. So too is the situation in Canada, where the 2017 general election campaign cost was around £42 million, having been £39 million in 2015 (Ibid, https://theconversation.com/)
There have been multiple demands for constitutional reforms ‘to expressly exclude for-profit corporations from the rights given to natural persons by the Constitution of the United States, prohibit corporate spending in all elections, and affirm the authority of Congress and the States to regulate corporations and to regulate and set limits on all election contributions and expenditures.’ The Saving American Democracy Amendment proposed by Bernie Sanders et al was introduced in the Senate on December 2011 but failed to pass. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_amendment).
With the above and other considerations in mind, the Constitution of Guyana could be reformed to simply demand that international best practices in campaign financing legislation be introduced and then amended to accommodate new developments at least once a decade. Where the introduction of ordinary law is concerned, in 2011 Transparency and Accountability Initiative published a brief with policy comprehensive recommendations that appear appropriate and could be introduced in a stepwise manner.
Initial steps: 1. Much like the requirements of the Representation of the People Act, Governments should require that all groups or individuals engaged in or acting to influence the outcome of an election file prompt reports that clearly identify the amounts and recipients of their contributions. Political candidates and officials should file prompt reports on all amounts and sources of funds received and all expenditures. 2. Disclosure requirements should apply to candidates, political parties and related organisations and to groups engaged in political advocacy. These should apply at the federal, provincial and local levels and should cover all types of election, including referendums and recalls. 3. Reports should be required to be made available to the public promptly and in an accessible, easily understood format. 4. Disclosure requirements should be enforced by an independent agency with political independence, legal authority and adequate staff and funding to enforce disclosure requirements effectively.
More substantial steps: 1. Each government should post on a central website a single searchable public database that includes sources and amounts of contributions and expenditures. This information should also be available in printed form. 2. Similar web-based and otherwise publicly accessible information should be published at the provincial and local levels.
Ambitious steps: 1. Contributions received by officials, including gifts, entertainment and other financial support and names of donors should be publicly reported. 2. There should be mandatory public registration of lobbyists and regular disclosure of clients, issues and financial expenditures. 3. Corporations, labour unions, trade and professional associations and other non-profit organisations should be required to adopt disclosure policies on transparency of expenditures for lobbying and campaigns (https://www.transparency-initiative.org/archive/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/4-Campaign-finance1.pdf).
