Dawn Ritch, Columnist
I have personally raised millions of dollars for Pearnel Charles and Portia Simpson Miller when they were running for the leadership of their respective parties.
No electoral commission now, or in the future will ever hear from my lips the names of those who gave me money. I have
collected huge amounts of cash in great, big, bulging brown envelopes, as well as cheques. And nobody is going to get me to divulge the names of those donors.
The legislature of the country is about to enter another feverish round of regulation promulgation and red tape. It spells the end of my political fund-raising activities.
I am completely against any form of state-funding for political campaigns. The Jamaican taxpayer already pays more than enough for Jamaica politics. They pay for the drivers of the 60 Members of Parliament, the MPs' health insurance, ministerial special advisers as well as a
myriad allowances for MPs labelled by ever-grander sounding names, and at ever-grander cost.
In the United Kingdom, the Labour party led by Prime Minister Tony Blair, is under investigation for the loans for peerages scandal. The Opposition Conservatives also has its fair share of dodgy cash. TheSunday Times newspaper of that country in a recent editorial entitled "No to State Funding" stated ...
"More state funding is not the solution. It is a lazy answer to the parties' inability to raise their own money through motivating their supporters. No other organisation can fall back on taxpayers' money simply because it finds itself unpopular and short of cash. It should be no different for political parties. Taxpayers bear quite enough burdens without making them pay for parties which many of them despise.
OVERREGULATION
"(Indeed) Labour's pitch on this issue - we cannot be trusted to raise money honestly so we want you to give it to us - is breathtaking in its audacity."
I'm convinced that overregulation always leads to manipulation. The less there is of one, the less corruption. Red tape is grossly inefficient as a method of operation. It also encourages avoidance, and has real potential to make criminals of the innocent.
Now the two major political parties in Jamaica are hunkering down for another round of deal-making. I predict therefore that every potential donor will, as a consequence, be laid open to criminal charges and public humiliation.
A particularly generous donor made me promise not to tell even the recipient that he had given the money. By the time our ever-eager legislators have finished therefore, they will have slammed the door on every honest donor. Far from wanting anything in return, many of them don't even want recognition.
My pitch was simple. I didn't pitch for a political party but for the individual who wanted to lead it. This was not only highly successful, but a tremendous amount of fun and deeply satisfying. I'm very sorry therefore that the People's National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party are about to make it impossible for me to do so again, all in the name of a little cheap and transient public relations.
Last week, Howard Mitchell had the nerve to write a letter to another newspaper saying "Abe Dabdoub has finally found a colour that suits him - yellow."
I know all about Mr. Mitchell's idea of courage. It is all about having ridiculous opinions, and encouraging others to hold them while he emigrates to Florida not once, but twice in his own lifetime.
COLOUR OF ENVY
He's the last person who should talk about colours, because he went from green to a shade of orange, then he went blue with Bruce Golding's National Democratic Movement, and, poor fellow, has now gone back to green, the colour of envy. It is clear he envies Dabdoub for having the courage of his own convictions. The difference between them is that Dabdoub would not encourage others to do something that he himself had no intention of carrying out.
This newspaper in an editorial last Thursday stated: "It is not for the PNP, or any party for that matter, to declare that it is not for sale ..." This is all the more ironic, because the public would far sooner trust the politician who can make that statement, than any electoral commission, even one set up in each of the 14 parishes.
The jackasses who talk on radio about following the systems established in the United States and Britain, are talking through their hats. Abroad, there are rigid disclosure requirements. But the same politicians are also the legislators so they always leave loopholes that can, and are, exploited with gay abandon. The American and British press are full of reports of the political-funding scandals now unfolding.
What will never change is the fact that politics runs on large donations. Big business will still do deals and try to peddle influence. Even with new legislation, whatever it may be, and new electoral commissions whoever may comprise them, the public will still never know who gave the largest donations.
The net result of this time-wasting effort will be to produce lots and lots of paper designed to obfuscate exactly what is taking place, as more and more codes of conduct political and otherwise are arrived at, but observed mainly in the breach, and without sanction. That, and a brand new and needless level of bureaucracy paid for out of the public purse.
It is quite impossible to legislate morality. The only option is to find and support the politicians who are indeed not for sale.
