Vernon Daley, Staff ReporterSenior officers in the island's main political parties admit that pressures from contributors for political favours was one of the major sources of corruption in Jamaica's politics that carry a serious threat to the island's democracy.
Earlier this year both parties insisted that their candidates had been warned against accepting money from drug dealers and instead should resort to legal fund-raising methods for their campaigns.
But the parties' representatives also confess that they have no structured programme in place to detect whether "dirty money" was entering the political coffers of candidates to fund their campaigns for the upcoming general election.
Despite their admissions, both the People's National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), who have formed the Government at eight to ten year intervals since 1944, insist that they have never been compromised by private funding. They each suggest that it is the other party which has given political favours to its friends.
Dr. Paul Robertson, PNP treasurer, nevertheless conceded there were circumstances in which a political contributor will be favoured by a PNP Government.
"If something comes before us where two people made a bid and the assessment is that there is a dead heat, then obviously we try to ensure that there can be some decision that recognises that (political contribution)," he said during an interview at the party's Old Hope Road headquarters recently.
The issue of private funding for political parties is emerging as a crucial topic of public discussion locally in the run-up to the general election due this year. It is also taking place in the context of growing public concern about corruption in public life.
With each of the 120 candidates for both major parties looking to spend between $3 million and $5 million on campaigning, the election bill this year is likely to run between $360 million and $600 million. All this money will have to be raised by the parties through private sources such as fund-raising activities and contributions.
There are suggestions that owners of large businesses contribute to both major parties, with the intention of forcing benefits from them while they are in office. PNP General Secretary Maxine Henry-Wilson, said the issue was "problematic" noting that in the lead-up to the 1997 general election, her party returned over $500,000 to two contributors because it was "not sure why they were making the contribution."
Chris Bovell, treasurer of the JLP says his party has never been cornered by contributors to return political favours, saying that it is made clear to them before they contribute that the party would not be swapping benefits for contributions.
However, Bruce Golding, former president of the National Democratic Movement (NDM), who spent over two decades in the JLP before resigning six years ago, dismisses the parties claims that they do not dole out favours in return for contributions.
"It would be grossly untrue to say that persons who contribute to political parties were not regarded by those parties as friends and were therefore looked at favourably when that party got into office," Mr. Golding said.
The former NDM president confessed that during his years as a Cabinet Minister in the JLP in the 1980s, he came under pressure to return favours to political contributors.
He recalled one occasion on which a contributor who was also a family friend asked him "to put in a word" for him at a Cabinet meeting, so he could get the contract for providing insurance coverage for a Government company. Mr. Golding said he complained to then Prime Minister Edward Seaga about the incident, following which a decision was taken to have insurance companies bid for placements with Government agencies.
In recent times, members of the JLP, have accused the PNP of giving road and housing contracts to PNP contractors. Money from these contracts, the JLP says, finds its way back into the PNP coffers as contributions. The governing party, however, brushes off the charges as baseless.
The potential for corruption arising from private funding of political parties has pushed Independent Senator Professor Trevor Munroe to table a resolution in the Senate, calling for a broad-based national commission to make recommendations on how to regulate political parties and provide them with public funding. The resolution will be debated in the coming weeks.
Political analysts along with political parties themselves argue that the dependence of parties on private sources of funding creates an opening for moneyed interests, including those involved in drug running, to buy influence by making contributions.
Even though the parties insist that money flowing to the coffers of their central organisation came from legitimate businessmen, they were unable to say the same for their candidates. The fact is, there is no systematic way of determining that candidates are using money from the drug trade and other illicit activities to fund their political work.
"I can't speak for every candidate," Dr. Robertson said.
However, Mrs. Henry-Wilson argued that the party has a good idea of the constituencies that are capable of funding their activities and those that are not.
"When we see a constituency all of a sudden being able to manage then it raises a red flag and we enquire," she said.
Like the PNP, the JLP does not have a system of checks in place for its candidates' source of funding and "would just have to look at his lifestyle," according to Mr. Bovell.
