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Allocation of public funds tend to favour ruling parties, SADC study
2006-09-01 09:50:39
By Apolinary Kweka
The basis of allocating public funds to political parties, particularly the disbursing of funds in proportion to seats and votes acquired in a country such as Tanzania has largely been working to the advantage of ruling parties and has been unfair to opposition.
In an environment where party financing, particularly private funding is generally a laissez faire business as in most of Southern African countries, there is a real risk of interest groups and wealthy individual to buy influence in political parties and in so doing erode public confidence in the political systems.
This is the conclusion of a study conducted recently in the Southern African Development Corporation (SADC) countries by an Institute for Security Studies based in Cape Town and the report available in the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) Info Service in Dar es Salaam.
The study states that while political parties are necessary conduits for political pluralism, they are major avenues of corrupting this process resulting in biases in public policy, differential policies toward businesses, criminal and drug money, vote buying and patronage, buying positions on party lists and nominations and illegal use of state resources.
There is, therefore, a need for adequate system of rules for the funding political parties which should improve the quality of opportunity for all parties competing in an election rather than work against it. Public funding should therefore ideally favour no political parties.
The study states further that public funding however is rarely adequate. As a result donations of various types, corruption kickbacks and returns on business investments are prominent sources of income for Southern African political parties.
” If public funds are insufficient from the view point of parties and the candidates incentives will be created to increase them either by means of private legal resources or by illegal means by creating private companies whose profit are channeled to finance the party therefore the insufficiency of funds raises the possibility of illegal and immoral conducts,” The study has revealed.
The example of the Botswana ruling Democratic Party which reveal the financial support from the South African Anglo American Corporation, which has massive mining interest in the country .
In South Africa where the public funding political parties has steadily been on increase since the momentous elections of 1994 it is well known that huge foreign contributions were key to the African National Congress (ANC) campaign funds for the 1994 and 1999 elections 50-80 per cent of all political parties campaign funds came from either business or foreign donors.
The study reveals that the problem of party and candidate financing in Southern African and anywhere else for that matter, essentially stems from the very limited of supply of party and candidates resources which usually generates uneven access to and excessive reliance on private sources of income for political purposes.
”The search for funds may induce politicians to listen more to those who give to their campaigns than those who vote for them or for their party,” the research has noted.
The study shows said that that private funding to political parties and candidates, in kind contributions such as allowing a party or candidate to use a public hall and income from sale of goods and services have many forms: party membership fees, private individual donations and company donations but not all private sources of income are undesirable.
The study sought to highlight the problem of political financing in Southern Africa, focusing on six SADC member countries which are Botswana, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia.
It has shown that in some Southern African countries there is recognition that money is politics. If not properly regulated, money presents real hazards and undesirable consequences such as biases in public policy, differential policies towards business, weakened and unaccountable political parties that jeopardise democracy.
Existing regulatory mechanisms on party financing however are largely focused on public funding, which leaves private funding a viable channel for party financing corruption.
The solution of the problem according to the study is the disclosure of the laws. It is essential that disclosure of funding sources should be incorporated into these laws.
The merits of disclosure cut across unrelated political cultures, hence the efforts of western democracies to curb corruption in party financing are worth emulating.
Public funding, public funding reduces dependence of private sources of income. This in turn minimises the impacts of self serving donors on party and candidate policy.
Though public funding alone cannot eliminate political finance corruption but to some extent decrease its scale.
Another setback of the public financing is that it may reduce membership fees and donations, which can lead to a decline in grassroots participation and this, may result in the political parties that are controlled from the centre.
”Where public funding is provided as in South Africa, Malawi and Tanzania, it usually excludes those political parties that are not represented in Parliament.
This unfortunately suppresses the possible emergence of an alternative political force and favours the maintenance of status quo,” the study maintained.
On control spending, the study noted that there is need for controlled spending because corruption in party funding tends to be concomitant with high spending, the demand for money particularly during election campaigns should be minimised as much as possible.
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