Why We Should Not Fund Political Parties Website
The funding of political parties has been a hot potato for the past couple of weeks and deserves even more discussion. The debate has developed some interesting side shows, especially the alliance ranged on the side for the proposition; it is not often one finds the NPP and NDC in complete agreement in public over an issue. Also on the “for” side are some heavyweight NGOs and individuals including the CDD and IEA and Chairman of the Council of State among many others. I am against the proposition because I think that it will undermine rather than further the aims of our democratic development. I understand what the supporters of the idea are saying. Political parties are very important for the functioning of democracy. They are the cornerstone of plural politics and play the role of quasi-public entities with responsibilities mandated by the Constitution. The media are in the same situation. We cannot have a functioning democracy without the involvement of the media and indeed the constitution goes out of its way to make specific demands of the media. The media and media institutions are so vital to the democratic state that the Constitution reserves not only rights but devolves some responsibilities to the media. But no one is arguing that newspapers must receive state support; indeed no one is arguing that even state sector advertising that could help level the media playing field should be distributed to all media houses in a way that helps them to survive. Nor is anyone suggesting that radio, which is the most dominant media - without which political information cannot be disseminated - should be supported by the public purse. Furthermore, we also have to look at the practicality of the scheme. In principle, public funding of political parties could be a good idea but its implementation will be so difficult and controversial that it would make the whole thing meaningless. There are some interesting suggestions about how to make it both practical and meaningful but none cuts the ice. For example, no one is suggesting that public funding must be extended to any party that succeeds in acquiring a registration certificate because we know of many that have acquired the paper but are virtually nonexistent. This means we will need some mechanism to sort the wheat from the chaff, and therein lies one danger. If we decide to fund any party that has representation in parliament it could lead to a situation where a party with a bigger share of the popular vote is denied funding when another that concentrates on winning one or two seats is funded with a smaller share of the overall vote. Going by membership would be even less reliable except if we were to use only audited fully paid up membership, but if a party succeeds in getting all of its members to pay their dues that party would not need public money. That is the key; the parties must go out and recruit dues paying members. At the moment the actual number of members of all our political parties together is said to be in the thousands rather than in the tens of thousands. Our parties are only election fighting machines and would be even more so if they are given public money. The idea of funding political parties from the national treasury is often linked with political party funding reform. In the UK, the proposals put forward by the Inter-Party Talks on the Funding of Political Parties which was chaired by Sir Hayden Phillips, linked the idea firmly to placing a cap on the amount of money that a party can receive from an individual or company. The idea of funding political parties is to curb corruption instead of "helping them to survive". In Ghana too, the issue of very rich people using their wealth to influence the party's policy and development exists but we are nowhere near the day when we can monitor in the amounts parties raise and their sources. In practice, the political parties will not rely any less on rich individuals and companies than they are doing at the moment. Our public money will be used to "top up" the money coming to the parties from their usual sources. We also have to listen to those who are saying that we have other priorities to which those in favour argue that democracy is expensive and must be supported et many ceteras. The point is that political parties must be able to raise funds from other sources but we have no other source for building health centres and clinics. Given the fact that funding will not make our democracy any better, it appears to make sense to use the scarce resources for the areas that will benefit more from state funding. However, my main reason for being against the proposal is political: political parties must be political and not bureaucratic in nature. This means they must look for members by persuading them through argument that they are worth supporting. The members must be the bedrock of the party by providing it with money, paid workers, volunteers, logistics and above all, ideological guidance. As it is, the parties are now organised around their officials and big-name benefactors. What we have now are mainly bureaucratic parties that relate to the people through a small coterie of elected officials and professional politicians who go to the people when they need their votes but are otherwise happy to leave the people splendidly isolated. You will understand this better if you observe the behaviour of our political parties during by-elections. I wrote a piece in this column called Politics without People during the Asawasi by-election. I observed that the arguments, such as got through the media filter were all about the tussle between the NPP and the NDC but very little about local issues. There was no effort to identify local solutions to whatever the Asawasi people perceived as their problems. Big name politicians simply breezed in, talked and left. That is politics without the people. There will be even more of this unfortunate syndrome if people perceive that public money is now being given to politicians. People will begin to demand their "share" even to attend rallies. The political parties might argue that they are already paying people to attend rallies but that is the bed they have made. Public money will entrench instead of reduce it. Let us look at it this way: at the moment most political coverage is done in the media as part of the media's routine activities. Once public funding comes in our media people will demand their pound of flesh and not in brown envelopes but in pristine white envelopes with Bank of Ghana stamped on them. The politicians are probably not doing themselves any favours by proposing this scheme at a time when public confidence in them is not very high. I did an informal poll at a workshop in Sunyani and found that people are opposed to this idea by a huge majority and the reasons they give do not reflect their views about democracy but about our political parties and politicians. As the NDC said about ROPAL, this may be a good idea but the timing is wrong.
Source: MJFM
