Panday calls for campaign finance reform

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front Mick­ela Pan­day is call­ing for cam­paign fi­nance re­form, say­ing the ab­sence of prop­er leg­is­la­tion con­tin­ues to fu­el re­peat­ed ac­cu­sa­tions about po­lit­i­cal fund­ing.

In a state­ment, Pan­day said claims about who is fi­nanc­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties should not be made light­ly and must be ad­dressed through prop­er chan­nels.

“Claims of that na­ture can­not sim­ply be thrown around in the me­dia. If there is cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion, it should be ex­am­ined by law en­force­ment so the coun­try can know the truth,” she said.

Pan­day said the pub­lic has grown weary of re­cur­ring al­le­ga­tions that sur­face every few years with­out res­o­lu­tion, while no mean­ing­ful ef­fort has been made to ad­dress the is­sue.

She point­ed out that Trinidad and To­ba­go still lacks cam­paign fi­nance laws re­quir­ing dis­clo­sure of po­lit­i­cal do­na­tions, spend­ing lim­its or in­de­pen­dent over­sight.

Ac­cord­ing to Pan­day, such trans­paren­cy is nec­es­sary not on­ly to pre­vent crim­i­nal in­flu­ence in pol­i­tics, but al­so to pro­tect in­di­vid­u­als and par­ties from what she de­scribed as smear cam­paigns.

“The pub­lic has a right to know who is fund­ing po­lit­i­cal pow­er. In­stead of trad­ing ac­cu­sa­tions, both par­ties should go to Par­lia­ment and fi­nal­ly pass the long over­due cam­paign fi­nance leg­is­la­tion.”