• Promised funds go the way of poll results

The National Democratic Movement (NDM) has admitted that it has run out of money and is struggling to keep its first general election campaign alive.

The two year old organisation has to be concentrating on providing information about the party and training its workers to work on Election Day, December 18.

"We're missing from the television, the newspapers and the radio, not by design, but because we do not have the money to buy advertising time and space," the party's campaign co-ordinator, Dr. D.K. Duncan, said yesterday.

Dr. Duncan said some financiers who were expected to underwrite the cost of the young organisation jumped ship after opinion polls indicated that the NDM would not win the elections.

"Apart from our regular corporate donors who financed the NDM from its inception, other people who made commitments have not come through," Dr. Duncan said.

The veteran political strategist said he joined the NDM with the understanding that $25 million would be donated as soon as the party put a top-class campaign management team in place. "We lived up to our end of the bargain," he said.

But in August, following an opinion poll which showed the NDM losing ground, the backers demanded that an alliance be formed between the NDM and the opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to "get rid of (Prime Minister P.J.) Patterson". This request, Dr. Duncan said, was rejected by NDM president, Bruce Golding.

The would be backers approached the NDM again in November to join forces with the JLP, but again the party said no.

NDM deputy general secretary, Chris Tufton, said some prospective financiers were motivated by political expediency rather than principle, in that "they will back the expected winners (of the elections) in the hope that they will reap the benefits after the elections".

He said further that many companies were strapped for funds themselves, with "those not being able to access a bail-out on the verge of collapse".

But even if the party had wads of money to spend, it would not concentrate on holding many mass meetings to 'hype-up' the party faithful. "Mass meetings are not a major part of our campaign strategy; we are having small classroom meetings and door-to-door interaction," Mr. Tufton said.

He said the party is using its limited resources to provide written material about the NDM, to train party workers, inform voters and prepare the party's Election Day machinery.

"Mass meetings are useful, in that they are motivational for the party loyalists so that they can go out and work hard for the party. They also give the perception that the party is strong. But in reality it is the same people who are being moved from one meeting to the next," Mr. Tufton said.

Mr. Tufton said there was a growing trend for voters to examine the issues, rather than support a party because of family tradition. For this reason, he said, smaller meetings in schoolrooms were more useful in putting across the NDM's core platform issues, such as constitutional reform.