OAS urging helps focus on T&T party funding

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Trinidad and Tobago should not need the Secretary General of the Organisation of American States (OAS) to admonish this country about the dangers to good government and to democracy posed by political funding. Miguel Insulza has been the latest high official to mount a bully pulpit on the subject, addressed to political parties and ruling administrations in the Caribbean. Addressing a Barbados forum on “Strengthening Regulation of Political Parties and Political Financing Systems”, Sr Insulza described action in this regard as “not only our duty but also our obligation”. His remarks suggested that regulation of political funding may be in danger of becoming a desired objective everyone talks about but nearly nobody does anything to achieve. Increasingly, commentators and voices in all political parties, have expressed concern over the levels of political funding in a free-for-all T&T atmosphere of anything-goes. In its report on the November 2007 polls, the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC), referring to campaign advertising, described it as “an extravagance of financing”.