Political party funding is essential for democracy

Solly Rakgomo | Thursday February 22, 2024 11:47

The announcement of political party funding rekindled the old debate about the connection between funding of political parties as a way to enrich democracy in Botswana. In addition, Botswana’s opposition parties have always decried the fact that the political playing field in Botswana’s democracy is not level as the ruling party enjoys unfair competition as it has all the resources at its disposal. However, the announcement by the Finance minister on the need to fund political parties led to some people to question whether there was a need to fund democracy in Botswana.

People must understand that today, it is almost inconceivable to have a functioning democracy without political parties. A central claim of democratic theory is that democracy induces governments to be responsive to the preferences of the people. Political parties, therefore organise politics in every modern democracy, and some observers claim that parties are what induces democracies to be responsive. Political parties can and do serve a wide variety of functions such as aggregating and articulating interests, developing competing policy proposals that provide voice and choice, selecting candidates for elected office, organising legislatures, coordinating the formation and activities of government, recruiting and linking leaders and supporters and conducting electoral campaigns.

Augustine Magolowondo reasons that as complex organisations that are at the heart of democracy, political parties require financial resources to perform their functions. Money is the all-important oil that keeps the party machinery going. In addition to money, non-monetary resources in the form of access to state premises, media or vehicles are often made available for political parties, and can make valuable contributions to parties’ abilities to organise themselves. In some instances, parties may win or lose elections well before they are held simply on account of their resource endowment or lack thereof. In other instances, how parties practice or fail to practice intra-party democracy has to some extent been influenced by the way they are financed and how these resources are allocated within the different parties. It must, however, be noted that even though money is an important asset in politics, it can at the same time be a danger if not well managed or regulated. Money can provide opportunities for abuse by the governing party as they are in control of public assets. Situations of abuse are particularly common in emerging African democracies that are operating in contexts faced with scarce resources and where it is difficult to track the different sources that political parties can use to get their financing. Proponents of party funding argue that even if there are potential dangers of abuse of money by political parties, this cannot be used as a pretext or excuse to deny funding to political parties as denying them funds will lead to excess private funding, which might have a negative impact on democracy within a state. Hillary De Bor decries the fact that private funding of political parties and candidates has been recognised by many countries as a source of corruption and as distorting the democratic process. In many countries where there is no public funding of political parties, private funders have always used the desperation of financially starved parties and funded them with some selfish conditions that results in diverting public policy from being people-centred to corporate elite centred. In other words, in situations where private funders are involved in political parties, this usually creates what Hannah Arendts calls a transactional approach to governance where the private funders call the shots for their own benefits or enrichment thus marginalising the ordinary voters. In addition, the lack of transparency of donations allows for corruption in the guise of money transfers, or gifts in kind, from corporations, billionaires, and even entities associated with crime, to party officials and Members of Parliament.

For example, during the proceedings of the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture in 2019, Angelo Agrizzi, former chief operating officer at African Global Operations (AGO), revealed that AGO spent between R4 million and R6 million monthly on cash bribes to senior government officials on the company’s payroll. This included Nomvula Mokonyane, a former minister and Premier of Gauteng province who allegedly received monthly payments of R50, 000 from 2002 to 2016, security upgrades, 12 cases of frozen chicken, 200kg of beef braai packs, eight lambs, and specialty alcohol including cases of premium brandy. In return, between 2003 and 2019, AGO received around R12 billion in government contracts. This is a clear example of how private funding can corrupt politics in a way that can lead to socio-economic and political instability.Even without evidence of direct corruption, the list of contributors to political parties raises much concern of undesirable influence on political activity within a state through donations of money to parties. It is against this background that many observers believe that solutions to the problem include restrictions on private funding, and the supply of public funding so that candidates and parties would not have to depend on wealthy individuals, corporations, or even foreign countries to cover the high costs of political campaigning.

It must, however, be noted that even though it is essential to fund political parties to make our democracy very progressive, there has to be a very strong legal and regulatory framework to ensure that political parties as well as politicians are accountable for the money that the taxpayers have availed to them. It will be very bad to throw taxpayers money at politicians and expect miracles to happen in terms of accountability and transparency. Besides laying a solid legal and regulatory framework for funding model or criteria, there is need for institutional bodies to be put in place to monitor enforcement of the established regulations. The monitoring functioning can be assigned to a public entity with legal authority to enforce the law and apply sanctions against violators. This body can consist of an Electoral Management Body, auditing agency, court, party registrar, etc. In Africa, the most common institution is the Electoral Management Body (in the case of Botswana, the Independent Electoral Commission. In situations where this body fails to use its powers, civil society and the media can take over the oversight role.