Garwin Davis, Assistant News Editor
ALTHOUGH strapped with a $360 million bill to foot party campaign for the upcoming general election the two main political parties are adamant that they will not accept dirty money.
Information Minister, Colin Campbell, said that each constituency for the People's National Party (PNP) in the upcoming general election may cost roughly $6 million to finance, a figure he admits was conservative.
However, the money for the campaign will not come from corrupt or unscrupulous sources.
Both parties claim that their candidates are warned against accepting money from drug dealers and instead should resort to legal fund-raising methods for their campaigns.
"We are not accepting any dirty money to finance our campaign," Mr. Campbell said in an interview with The Sunday Gleaner on Friday night in Ocho Rios. "We will be raising money mainly at the constituency level and, yes, we will be accepting contributions from the private sector."
Asked how will the party guard against candidates brokering deals with unscrupulous persons, the Minister said such a possibility appeared remote, noting "that would be a foolish deal for anyone to broker."
He, however, noted that if contributions appear to be exorbitant, particularly from persons whose financial backgrounds are not known, the party, before accepting, would want to know the source of the money.
"This is something which all our candidates are aware of," he said. "We don't make deals and we don't accept, using your word, sleaze money."
PNP's General Secretary, Maxine Henry-Wilson who also sat in on the interview, agreed. She, however, notes that without campaign financing laws, there is the risk that sleaze money will make its way into campaigns. "I am all for state finan-cing laws," she said. "With the absence of these we just have to ensure our candidates stay away from illegal contributions - as a party we don't want to be a part of that."
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, several weeks ago, in a session with journalists at Vale Royal, suggested as much. He told reporters that his party would be seeking to stay free from persons with questionable characters, noting there were five potential candidates, whom the party had to discard after internal investigations revealed they had tainted backgrounds.
JLP officials, while declaring they would not be accepting "sleaze money" to fund their election campaign, are accusing the PNP of hypocrisy.
"They talk a good game but the facts speak for themselves," explained Dr. Ken Baugh, party General Secretary. "We have always been the party not to accept money which we consider tainted. We do not want money from drug dealers and we want nothing to do with the underworld. Judging from its past history I am not sure what to make of what the PNP is trying to say. They have given out billions of dollars in contracts to persons with questionable backgrounds and these are some of the same people who are contributing heavily to the party's election coffers. The PNP have also been known to accept money from people who are believed to be involved in the drug trade. I say, let the facts speak for themselves. The billions of dollars, which have been paid out, where have all that money gone -- where is all that money going. We have been asking these questions and are yet to get any meaningful answers."
One source who requested anonymity said that both parties were not being truthful about the source of their funding and will indeed be receiving a lot of money from the drug trade for their campaigns.
"You really expected them to admit to this?" he asked. "This has been going on for years and is not about to be stopped now. It is very disingenuous for the parties to be talking about distancing themselves from the underworld when the truth is that they are not in a position to do so."
