Where these exist, markets are distorted and the public suffers.
While in opposition and on the campaign trail, the Progressive Liberal Party made it crystal clear that campaign finance reform would be high on its agenda, if it were to be elected. Now that this is the fact, any number of people are watching and waiting to see what the administration proposes to do.
This issue is currently surfacing in a most interesting way. There are any number of Bahamians who are whispering the line, that payback time has come for any number of financiers. These are the people, who between them, orchestrated the funding of major and minor political parties in The Bahamas.
Quite ordinary people were amazed to see the extent to which both the Progressive Liberal Party and the Free National Movement seemed prepared to go in order to either retain the reins of government, or assume them.
As the record demonstrates, the PLP was able to match and eventually beat the FNM at the money game. This large expenditure of private money raises a host of extremely interesting questions. A key question would be to determine why rich people would spend so much to either keep a party in power, or fund the efforts of an upstart. The presumably obvious answer, is that when rich people invest money, they do so in order to further their interests.
One interesting way in which this issue surfaces in the aftermath of an election, is to see the extent to which certain interests and classes are able to have their private interests conflated and confused with the ﾑpublic interest.ﾴ In some instances, the connection is subtle and accepted. In this regard, few Bahamians are ever offended when supporters of the party in power are respected, recognised and rewarded for their many labours. Things are somewhat different when known party supporters use their connections to parlay influence into money air-marked for their pockets and the grasping hands of their political masters.
This matter of influence peddling has another more sinister side, which is that people with pockets deep enough to fund a political campaign, are often the kind of people who have enough clout to influence legislation. When this happens, private interests are transformed. They become the pith and essence of public policy. There are, for sure, other dimensions of this matter. These sometimes involve people who use purported political connections to ﾑshake downﾴ unsuspecting investors, or otherwise convey an image of power.
Here of late, a number of once obscure and struggling businessmen are riding high. Some of them owe their successes to their involvement in any number of shady dealings. Others owe their newfound successes to their close political contacts with the current administration. In the latter category are any number of people who are little more than influence peddlers. There have been a number of cases, where individuals with no known interest or prior involvement in certain industries, are newly empowered and ﾑriding highﾴ.
As in other instances where sharp dealing is the order of the day, it is notoriously difficult to pin some of these people down. But there are yet again instances, where the aura of influence peddling glows. One indicator of this is to be seen with any number of larger than life ﾑrags to richesﾴ stories which usually attend certain business persons. Another clear sign of influence peddling is to be observed when political and other appointments cluster in certain circles.
It is an open secret in this and similarly situated societies, that persons who are closely connected with the party in power would often seek to cash in. Some do so for the glory, others for the money. As we have previously indicated, there are instances and examples where influence peddling is subtly woven into public policy, and more blatant cases where it is rank, rampant and thoroughly offensive.
Editorial, The Bahama Journal
