Ian Boyne

For those of us who have not mortgaged our souls to any of the political parties, the most jolting information which came out of the recent Trafigura debate in Parliament was the telling and compelling admission by KD Knight and Peter Phillips than all Parliamentarians routinely lie about campaign financing and provide dummy invoices to hide campaign sources.

KD Knight dared any Opposition member to challenge the veracity of his charge of deli-berately hiding campaign finance sources, and Peter Phillips referenced Neville Gallimore's admission in Parliament of unease over lying about his declaration of campaign financing. As I said in my last column on this issue, Bruce Golding has done a service to the nation by bringing to light the Trafigura issue, for it gives us the golden opportunity to focus on some structural issues which have long needed attention.

Of course, the Jamaica Labour Party and its supporters in the media have little interest in the broader issues, sensing that the Tafigura affair has all the elements of histrionics, high drama and emotionalism which could easily sweep any opposition party to power. An opposition party in the political wilderness for 17 long years and facing an immensely popular opponent has to be forgiven for trying to squeeze every bit of juice out of the Trafigura issue. (Though it has brought one unwelcome unintended consequence: The election has now, most assuredly, been pushed back for a number of months!)

The politicians have their narrow agenda, but it is we in the media who are sworn to a different set of objectives and who should have the public interest in view who should be castigated for falling for adrenaline over analysis and for hyperbole over heuristics.

Incredible gullibility

For one, the media displayed incredible gullibility over Trafigura's 'disclosure' to CVM that the money to the Colin Campbell account was really a commercial transaction rather than a donation. Normal journalistic scepticism and probity were abandoned for credulity. Instinctively, we preferred to believe the version of the story from a foreign company than to believe our own politicians. Now our own politicians have given us every reason to be sceptical of them and, indeed, to adopt a position of extreme caution in assessing their statements. I grant you that.

But, foreign commercial interests are no more inherently credible than Jamaican politicians. They all have their particular interests to protect. All weekend when CVM was being congratulated for giving us a fuller side to the story and for showing us the real hanky-panky taking place, when our government was lying to us that the $31 million from Trafigura was a donation to the People's National Party, no one bothered to ask whether it was Trafigura which was lying.

But then, the hurried meeting of Cabinet ministers over that weekend and the silence of PNP spokespersons would have strengthen the suspicion that the Tafigura story was really true and that, indeed, we had on our hands the mother of all scandals. It seemed as though some kickback was involved, that somebody or sets of persons were involved in unmistakable corruption. That Colin Campbell was sacrificed that weekend and the money ordered to be returned only deepened the perception that something was terribly wrong and sleazy with the Trafigura deal. The PNP's information management of the issue is another matter.

But, it turns out that the money was truly a political contribution, deliberately and deceptively disguised by Tafigura as a commercial agreement, with dummy invoices provided to cover the tracks. A reprehensible action in my view, but something which, it turns out, is regularly done by both parties. Now I accept the view that two wrongs don't make a right and that it is not enough for the PNP to say "but all a we do it". Those of us who are truly independent must condemn immorality and deception wherever it occurs and we must do so clearly.

I would need convincing

But, if I am being asked to vote out one government for another, I must be convinced that the incoming fellows are above the practices for which I am being urged to boot out the incumbents. It can't be that all of you are doing the same corrupt and immoral practice and because one set gets caught we should boot them out and put in the other set of corrupt actors. Now I know this argument might be convenient for the PNP, but forget about them for a minute and let's look at this thing dispassionately, which is extremely difficult to do in this partisan and tribalised political culture.

An attempt was made to hide the political contribution to the PNP to protect Trafigura from having to disclose this information, which is required by Dutch law. How is this qualitatively different from politicians from both sides doing the same to protect local private sector people? Just because the firm is foreign? The immorality of an act should not be dependent on whether it is done in complicity with a foreign agent or a local one.

Perhaps there are greater risks with regard to our international relationships, but this is not how the "scandal" is being positioned. It should, indeed, be of concern to all of us, especially those who put a premium on truth-telling like those of us who are religious, that our politicians think nothing of dissembling, as Peter Phillips puts it, to get campaign financing.

Let me be plain. That it was done in the Trafigura affair is deplorable and the Government made the right decisions to both send back the money and to accept Colin Campbell's resignation. Whether others should resign would have to await the evidence, not speculation, of their clear, unambiguous involvement and if that evidence is presented we must not put any spin on it. We have to begin to take morality and ethics seriously in this country and the Prime Minister who has spoken so often about Christian values has to lead by example. And those of us in the church must hold her to the highest standards of the Christian faith and not make partisan loyalty cause us to be idolaters. (I hope Rev. Garnet Roper is reading this).

As I said in my first article on this issue, we cannot delay any longer not only a debate on campaign financing but a larger debate on the role of money and class on democracy.The rich and powerful have an enormous influence on our politicians and they purchase our democracy. Bruce Golding, who has presented some of the finest ideas on constitutional reform of the last decade, should be at the forefront of this debate. He has both the intellectual capability and the proclivity for it.

The Observer of Thursday October 19 asks some good questions in its editorial "You did not come Clean, Madam Prime Minister," but, I cannot agree with its view that "Trafigura was wrong because the money came from a firm contracted by the state and it smacks of bribery and corruption". Is the Observer putting forward the view that no company which does any business with the state can ethically make a contribution to the political party which forms the Government?

Would it hold the view that its owners, who are certainly no strangers to business dealings with the PNP Government, should have no right to contribute to the PNP? The Observer is guilty of either hypocrisy or muddled thinking. If no firm which makes a donation to a political party could ever do any business with a Government of that party, then what would be the consequence of this restriction? It's absurd. What we need are ethical, morally upright and fair-minded persons who will not take decisions or award contracts on the basis of who is giving what amounts.

While structures are important, we also need morally strong persons in the state sector who are courageous enough to resist the urgings of the big capitalists who want to cash in on their "investments" to the party which forms the Government.

Nothing wrong

Let us have the campaign finance reforms and make the laws setting out the restrictions clearly and then we can deal with the violators. But, until those laws are enacted, the PNP cannot be said to have done anything wrong by accepting donations from a foreign entity. That it was complicit in deception is another matter for which a price has been paid. But, if the donation had been done openly, clearly marked as a political contribution, following the strictures of OECD laws, it could not be deemed a necessarily corrupt act simply because there was a contract to be signed.

The matter of perception of undue influence because of the imminence of the signing of a new contract is an issue. But let us not be hypocritical in saying that only the PNP has received foreign contributions. Former PNP Minister Anthony Abrahams admitted on the Breakfast Club on Thursday morning that in 1980 he received contributions from foreign tourism interests who wanted the JLP to come to power to protect their business interests.

Just for a good name

People don't make political contributions for altruistic purposes. Their purposes are ideological and commercial. They are buying influence one way or another. Don't fool ourselves or believe that the big fellows in the Private Sector Organisation or Jamaica and the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce are all ascetic patriots who contribute only for "the proper functioning of the democratic system" and never with any intent to win favour from the particular parties. Let's cut the hypocrisy and the crap.

Trafigura was not contributing to the PNP because it is a socialist company which is enamoured by Portia's love of poor people. They were pragmatic, hard-nosed business people seeking to retain their contract and remain in the good books of the PNP Government. Their motives were the same as other contributors to the PNP and the JLP, both local and foreign. And as it turns out, they used the same duplicitous methods used by other contributors to both the PNP and the JLP.

We need the campaign finance reform urgently and we need to explicate the issues surrounding how our democracy is really bought out by monied interests.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email him at ianboyne1@yahoo.com