EDITORIAL - Add campaign finance to the mix

In the face of last week's direct challenge to the Jamaican state by terrorist militias, particularly in the west Kingston enclave of Tivoli Gardens, Prime Minister Bruce Golding is right to have put back on the legislative agenda a series of anti-crime bills that will give the security forces greater leeway to confront the criminals.

That package includes amendments to the Bail Act that will allow law-enforcement officers to detain criminal suspects for longer periods without triggering their rights to habeas corpus, as well as an anti-gang legislation that will prohibit the association of people for likely criminal intent.

This newspaper is, of course, mindful of the need to protect the rights of individuals but is also aware of the need to balance the rights of others and the defence of national security, such as was necessary last week when assorted criminals rallied in Tivoli Gardens and elsewhere to prevent the arrest of reputed drug lord Christopher Coke.

The Jamaican state, for several days, was under direct threat from a would-be parallel authority.

While we, in the context of these developments, support the anti-crime initiatives and urge their full and mature consideration, we believe that it is important to highlight a glaring omission: party finance legislation.

A few years ago, when it was revealed that the Dutch commodity firm Trafigura, with which Jamaica did business, had 'donated' $30 million to the then ruling People's National Party (PNP), there appeared to be consensus on the need for legislation on party and election campaign financing.

People correctly felt that Jamaicans had a right to know who financed the parties and their candidates so they could come to a determination of what the funders might expect in return.

The need for such transparency, we feel, is even greater in the context of the Coke-Tivoli Gardens affair.

Tivoli Gardens, and the broader west Kingston constituency, and the forerunner of Jamaica's so-called garrison communities, is, or it was up to last week, a stronghold of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), and considered the nerve centre for the party's street operations. Coke is close to the JLP and some of its officials and wields great power and influence in west Kingston and, on the evidence of last week, commands the loyalty of criminal gangs across the capital.

Coke's influence and power

The greater part of Coke's influence and power, the Americans say, comes not from his supposed legitimate businesses, which benefit from government contracts, but from the narcotics he exports to the United States and the guns he brings into Jamaica. This has allowed him to spread his largesse to Tivoli Gardens and west Kingston residents as well as maintain a rough system of justice in the community.

But there are deeper questions about the depth and breadth of the relationship that people like Coke maintain with the country's politicians and the real effect of this relationship. This is a matter not only for the JLP, as Mrs Portia Simpson Miller, the president of PNP, conceded at the recent meeting of her party's National Executive Council.

By this newspaper's estimate, it costs the two major political parties, between them, around $1.5 billion to finance the 2007 general election. The public does not know who paid the bill and whether the Jamaican state was the collateral pledged by the parties.

The parties must be made to open their books to the public.

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