Money is important to politics, Mr Kingsley reminded a seminar on political party financing in Kingston last week. But, if you don't regulate the money, the money will regulate the process.

Or, put another way, special interests, or, as Mr Edward Seaga once famously warned, "tainted money", may buy its way into Gordon House and Jamaica House.

This newspaper, therefore, is in favour of regulating the financing of elections in Jamaica, including state funding for political parties. Indeed, this is a matter under consi-deration by the Electoral Commission (EC) of Jamaica, which has promised to release soon its recommendations on how such a system should be fashioned. In exchange for public money, parties, to some degree, will have to open their books, making public their list of private contributors and operate in a manner reflective of basic corporate governance.

As is the convention with proposals from the Electoral Commission, it is expected that Parliament will endorse the recommendations. While we understand the historical reason for this approach to recommendations from the EC - including its contribution in transforming Jamaica's formerly deeply corrupt and turbulent electoral process - it is unfortunate that the proposals have not yet been open to vigorous public debate. This is an element of its operational system that the EC needs to fix: how to get a broader range of opinion, beyond the political parties, during policy formulation.

Election-financing proposals

It seems likely, however, that the Electoral Commission will recommend a phased implementation of whatever party and election-financing proposals it tables, on the grounds of the inability of the Government at this time to meet the entire obligation. Indeed, elections in Jamaica are not, in the context of a relatively poor country, cheap affairs. It is estimated, for instance, that the two major political parties, between them, spent J$1.5 billion on the September 2007 general election, or $25 million per constituency. The Government allocated twice that amount for the management of elections, although that budget has dipped by more than two-thirds now that the country is past the election season.

But, whatever the initial requirements of the EC, we believe that it is in the interest of political parties that they move even faster than the demands of the EC in displaying public accountability.

As we have argued before, political parties are not private clubs, structured to serve the interests of their members only. They ask the wider population to trust them with state power and the command of vast resources, to govern in the interest of all the people.

Transparency

This demands, in our view, greater transparency at the organisational level than the parties hitherto have been willing to provide. It should not have to be forced on them.

If the parties are serious about good governance and the right of the people to scrutinise the basis on which leaders offer themselves to ser-vice, the parties would voluntarily agree - even ahead of the commission's report and the introduction of its auditing arrangements - to publish annual accounts and lists of their contributors. It would help, we believe, in lifting dwindling public confidence in political organisations.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.