Editorial | Bring transparency to party financing

It is not unreasonable that the People’s National Party (PNP) wants to know the full cost of, and who paid the bill for, Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson Smith’s failed bid, including its slick, American-style campaign, to become the secretary general of the Commonwealth. The party, through its shadow finance minister, Julian Robinson, has asked questions to this effect, in Parliament, of Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

While transparency is, of itself, in order, its application in this instance has deeper relevance, given the claims – vehemently denied by Johnson Smith – that she was the proxy candidate of Great Britain, as part of Boris Johnson’s and the Old Dominion’s effort to unseat the incumbent, Baroness Patricia Scotland. The Opposition is searching for any signs of a Jamaica-UK quid pro quo in the project – and anything else with which it can make political hay.

Put another way, the PNP, in this case, is embracing the value of transparency against potential underhand dealings. It is an approach, however, that the PNP should apply not only to matters in which it smells political advantage. It should insist upon it for the entirety of Jamaica’s political system, including its own operations. Indeed, in the same way Jamaicans should know, of right, who funded Johnson Smith’s campaign, they have a right to know who are the big funders of political parties and the financiers of their election campaigns.

The PNP has an opportunity to assume the moral high ground to which it pretends on this matter by, at its next annual conference in September, or before, publishing its full audited accounts for the preceding dozen years, as well as those for the previous decade. It should also invite the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to do the same. Further, to lend credibility to the questions it asked about Johnson Smith’s campaign, the PNP should end its objection to the public declaration of big campaign funders and urge the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) to begin updating the law for approval by Parliament.

BEGIN A CAMPAIGN

In the meantime, the independent members of the ECJ should begin a campaign of their own in support of these changes, including amending the law to make it explicit that the parties have to themselves make their audited accounts public. Additionally, the ECJ has to update its own systems to ensure that it is in keeping with the law on this matter.

By publishing its audited accounts, the PNP would return to where it fleetingly went more than a decade ago, before its great regression. In 2010, it did make its financial statements public. It soon went back to its old ways of providing opaque summaries of the accounts to delegates at its annual conference.

With respect to what is legally required of parties, there is not only need for greater clarity, but rules that make the information more easily available to the public. For instance, registered political parties are required to file annual reports, including audited accounts, with pertinent information about the organisations. But the law does not specifically list audited accounts among the information that should be in the register kept by the ECJ and available for inspection by the public. While the legislation obligates the ECJ to also place this information “on a website maintained by the commission”, the documents are not easily found on the ECJ’s website, if indeed it is there.

LODGE AUDITED ACCOUNTS

Further, while the law requires registered parties to lodge the audited accounts with the ECJ, nothing specifically requires them to present these reports, in full, at their annual conferences – except in the case of a party that receives state funding for its operation. But that part of the law is not yet in effect.

Under the law, a Jamaican political party could legally spend up to J$1.575 billion on a campaign – J$630 million by the central organisation, and a total of J$945 million by its 63 candidates at J$15 million apiece. In the 2020 COVID-19-truncated campaign, the JLP said it spent upwards of J$300 million. The PNP suggested it spent within that range, too. However, the public knows little of where this money comes from.

Political parties have to report to the ECJ on donations received in the six months before an election is constitutionally due, and six months afterwards. They have to identify donors of J$250,000 and upwards, as well as companies with government contracts that contribute during the campaign period, and for up to two years afterwards. But these individuals and firms are never publicly named, and the ECJ only releases summaries of the funding received by the parties.

Jamaica’s politicians argue that transparency would lead to a drying up of financing, an argument that turns on its head one of the fundamental notions of democracy – the transparency of the process. If people are unaware of who pays the piper, there is greater likelihood that special, and unsavoury, interests can call the tune.

Indeed, it is an awareness, and concern, that it happens, that helps to drive distrust in the political process, revealed in data that Jamaicans believe that most politicians are corrupt and that elections are manipulated. Or a worsening of what happened in the last general election, when the voter turnout was only 37.2 per cent