CAMPAIGN finance reform and disclosure are today among the top political issues both locally and internationally. Several factors may have combined to make this so. Among them: The increasing cost of running a successful campaign; the increasing difficulty in raising money; greater access to unregulated sources of funds; and, the rising expectations of voters and party loyalists.

In the United States as well as in other countries such as Great Britain, France and Canada, the debate centres around “soft money” — money contributed to a political part as a whole, which is unregulated and “hard money” — money contributed directly to a political candidate, which is regulated.

Looking ahead to grappling with these and other issues, the Electoral Commission of Jamaica, in July this year, produced a report to parliament with their recommendations for new legislation to introduce and to regulate state registration and financing of our political parties along with the necessary disclosure requirements. In addition, the ECJ proposed guidelines for amending Sections 53-61 of the Representation of the Peoples Act (ROPA) to provide for campaign financing reform.

The Commission deliberated for over five years on this, consulting both local and international agencies. An important area that will still remain to be addressed is how to manage the cultural and behavioural patterns among candidates and voters that gave birth to the now considered unregulated practices in the first instance. Early evidence is that in Jamaica, many political contributors prefer to be anonymous donors.

Culture determines how people behave in circumstances due to their background, values, deeply held beliefs, personal motives or other personal factors regardless of the laws, rules or regulations that govern those circumstances. We see this operating at the workplace daily. We try to set up procedures and practices for the benefit of the entire workforce and to ensure efficient production and yet, individuals will come up with their own interpretation that circumvents the procedures and expected outcomes. They figure out how to “do a thing” that suits them better. This is true, for example, with education, social matters and politics.

If we assume that the relationship between a politician and his/her outside funder is a function of a relationship that reflects cultural patterns, new regulations and new schemes alone will not produce the desired changes. It may be that the politician and those outside funders need and enjoy the relationship they now have. There may need to be a change in the value system to which both the politician and the supporter subscribe. By and large, new regulations may just introduce new avenues for people to do old things. So we can’t pin our hopes on new regulations alone.

In its report to parliament, the Electoral Commission makes the following proposals. Each registered political party shall:

1. maintain financial records that will be audited by an independent auditor selected by the ECJ.

2. appoint an “accountable officer” who shall sign all returns and financial statements and shall be responsible for the party’s financial matters.

3. file an annual report with the Electoral Commission.

4. advise the Electoral Commission of all banks with which the party does business.

5. disclose all cash receipts and expenditures to a committee of the Electoral Commission. The Commission shall have the power to investigate the use of funds and to summon witnesses, if necessary. The Commission would also determine if and when itsfindings would be made public.

These measures would obviously result in improvements. However, there are weaknesses. The biggest weakness of the ECJ’s proposals so far is that they do not require full disclosure. Only people who contribute J$100,000 per year or more are required to be identified. Candidates should be required to disclose their total, itemised receipts and the Commission should not appear to want to control the information disclosed.

There is a higher standard to which seven states and two cities in the United States have aspired since the late 1990s. This is referred to as a clean election. A clean election is defined as one in which candidates agree to accept full public funding in return for rejecting special interest contributions; agree to campaign spending limits; and observe established disclosure requirements. While spending limits will vary from state to state, disclosure plans conform by and large to the same criteria:

1. There must be a campaign finance disclosure law in place.

2. There must an electronic filing system for voter registration.

3. The data required to track money movements must be publicly accessible.

4. There must be a user-friendly website for public use.

The University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) has conducted a grading system of all 50 states in the US since 2003. Their 2008 results identified four areas of greatest weakness among the 50 states:

1. Not reporting both occupation and employer of each contributor.

2. No completely voluntary electronic filing system

3. No electronic filing system altogether.

4. Not reporting the total amounts raised and spent by each candidate.

According to a prominent member of the ECJ, “Full disclosure cannot mean disclosure that is going to put people at risk. You know the country that we are living in.” With all respect to the ECJ member, he is talking about fear more than risk. Fear is an emotional response to a real or perceived threat.

For example, the risk of driving an automobile, which is quite measurable and insurable, is totally different than the fear of driving one, which nowadays, may be non-existent.

A British survey company did an interesting exercise a few years ago. They interviewed a sample of people on a selected street in the UK. “How fearful would you be walking down this street after dark,” was the question. Thirty-seven per cent said, “very fearful,” yet only 0.6 percent had actually been a victim of a crime on that street.

What we fear most is not necessarily where our greatest risks lie.

How we handle our fears could be a mark of our development. Remember the development phase of our children who are afraid to fall asleep in a darkened room?

We need to focus on the benefits of disclosure beyond the obvious transparency and accountability that it would bring. Disclosure should not be cast primarily in the role as a safeguard against wrongdoing, though, it is certainly that. Disclosure is a key ingredient towards clean elections and having clean elections should be the objective of every democratic society. This way, the perception of politics as being primarily corrupt may diminish and more persons may seek to participate in it as a function of the democratic process as well as a desirable career option.

Gary Peart is the CEO of Mayberry Investments Limited. He can be contacted at gary.peart@mayberryinv.com.