The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE government has made no progress towards enacting campaign finance laws three years after Prime Minister Perry Christie said he was committed to addressing the problem, with State Minister for Legal Affairs Damian Gomez revealing to The Tribune yesterday that a draft of the legislation has been languishing since 2007.

In a frank admission, Mr Gomez said: “Privately most members support (campaign finance laws) on both sides. The problem is when we get in the group and start looking at how to raise money to fund campaigns, all the principles start to disappear ... at this point I have no update on it. The draft that exists needs to be vastly updated. It requires a lot of work. It was in draft form at the end of 2007.”

A recent revelation by Stellar Waste to Energy CEO Dr Fabrizio Zanaboni that both Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) and Free National Movement (FNM) parliamentarians have requested small contributions to aid their constituencies while his company had business before the government highlights gaps in this country’s political donation system, a system that has long failed to incorporate recommendations made over the years by international organisations like the Organisation of American States (OAS).

Mr Gomez said while he does not know if campaign finance laws will be enacted this term, he is in the meantime trying to create bipartisan support for a public registry system that would require parliamentarians to reveal their donors.

“The House (of Assembly) should have a register of donations and any donation received should be registered, including the date and amount,” he said.

“But right now we have difficulty getting people to even disclose their financials. I’ve been attending meetings with Hubert Chipman,” Mr Gomez said, referring to the FNM MP for St Anne’s.

“We’ve gone to England and he was in Trinidad during the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) conference. We have similar views on these types of issues. In the next few months we want to bring something with bipartisan support.

“We are discussing things that haven’t been discussed before, looking at the United Kingdom and its registry where, as you get a donation, you have a specific period to disclose. You can be expelled from the House if you fail to do so, so it’s a serious thing.”

Asked whether the government will bring campaign finance laws this term, he said: “I will try (to get us to do it) but I don’t have any expectations one way or the other.”

Because of this status quo, Bahamians cannot guarantee that corruption does not occur in government, Mr Gomez conceded, noting that even among members of Cabinet there is ignorance about where the governing PLP gets its money.

“I’m a member of the Cabinet and I don’t know who all gives money,” he said. “I may suspect but if you ask me to prove it I can’t. From the party I got $5,000 the last time. I didn’t consider that significant in the scheme of things but in comparison some people got considerable funds from the party (before the last election).”

Finance laws typically emphasise that the identity of donors be disclosed to the public. They often place limits on how much money donors can give and they define who is eligible to contribute.

In July 2012, two months after the last general election, Mr Christie told a Parliamentary Conclave that the practice of politicians using money to persuade voters had deteriorated to “repugnant” and sometimes “criminal” levels over the past 15 years.

He said at the time: “The country has to decide, opposition and governing people here, we have to decide whether or not we are prepared to put in place regulations that will govern the conduct of elections and persons who are contesting those elections with respect to the monies being spent.”

“We have to be honest with ourselves here, brutally honest with ourselves in the recognition that practices have evolved in the Bahamas over the last 10 years, 15 years that are repugnant to best practices in a democracy. Do we have the will to address what we know to exist in the best interest of this democracy?”

Mr Christie added: “We are living a lie to just continue to allow this current system that we’re operating under to exist because you know and I know, and everyone else knows that a lot of things are happening, where you’re taking advantage of all sorts of opportunities if you’re the government and it places people at a significant disadvantage and that’s not how a democracy functions. “The only way (reform) is going to work is if parliamentarians agree that there is a compelling urgency to be more accountable in what we’re doing, more transparent in what we’re doing.”