Dregs rolling in dosh

Editorial-August 29, 2014,

Election Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya has urged the mainstream political parties to curtail expenditure on election related propaganda. They spend billions of rupees during elections and one wonders where all this money comes from.

The higher the campaign expenditure candidates or their parties incur the more dependent they become on financiers who, in most cases, are crooks who part with some of their black money in return for various favours from politicians after elections. It is alleged that a foreign drug baron who made an abortive attempt to smuggle in the largest ever heroin haul into this country lavishly bankrolled some ruling party politicians’ election campaigns.

It is not political parties as such that spend money on election campaigns. Individual candidates raise funds on their own and put aside part thereof for personal use or invest them through fronts. Some of the well known (as well as notorious) captains of commerce are said to have reached the commanding heights of the business world thanks to politicians’ campaign funds!

It is usually the candidate with the biggest campaign bankroll who secures the highest number of preferential votes provided he or she is somewhat popular. For, he or she is in a position to ‘bribe’ voters. Once, a candidate gave away a truckload of bottles of arrack during a parliamentary election campaign in a Colombo suburb. There have been instances where bags of rice, dry rations and even mobile phones were distributed among voters. Most politicians have set up foundations through which they engage in ‘social work’. For these activities they need funds, which come from big businesses and anti-social elements like drug barons, bootleggers and smugglers.

If the present electoral system is a problem, as argued in some quarters, because a great deal of funds has to be spent on electioneering in an entire district, a way out may be the adoption of the German electoral model which is a combination of both the first-past-the-post system and Proportional Representation.

There has been a suggestion that the preferential vote be abolished because it is the mother of all battles and even intra-party clashes. But, the elimination of that mechanism will only create a situation where the party leaders can ensure that their favourites and not the popular candidates enter Parliament, Provincial Councils and LG bodies.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the preferential vote or manape which is blamed for the faults of political dregs. The JVP is free from manape battles because it fields decent candidates who put the party before self. Even in the UNP and the UPFA there are some candidates who conduct clean election campaigns. Nominating decent men and women to contest elections is half the battle in overcoming the problems associated with the preferential vote as well as the entire electoral process.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink, as they say. The Polls Chief may have discussions with the two main parties in a bid to make them reduce their campaign expenditure, but never will they agree to do as he says for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile, the Polls Chief has publicly pooh-poohed the argument that the 17th Amendment would have helped conduct free and fair elections; he has asked the media whether there is anything that he cannot do now but would have been able to do if the 17th Amendment had been fully implemented. If he is so confident that he is vested with enough powers to do his job, let him put his foot down and make all parties and candidates fall in line instead of pleading with them to obey election laws.