AG says campaign financing legislation not on present legislative agenda

Oct 17, 2016 News

The Campaign Financing Legislation which has been touted as necessary to ensure transparency on the funding of political parties’ operations and campaigning is not on the present legislative agenda for Guyana, says Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs Basil Williams.
Williams was asked during a recent press briefing to offer an update on when the legislation will be tabled in the National Assembly.
In response, he said, “I suppose that’s something we’ll have to look at, but it is not necessarily, not on this present legislative agenda.”
The AG said he doesn’t believe the issue has been addressed by government as yet. “You know our legislative agenda is very taxing and there are other priority legislation at this time.”
He said that President David Granger had mentioned some of these priority legislations during his presentation to Parliament when it came out of recess on Monday last.
The President had mentioned that the Witness Protection Bill, the Protected Disclosures Bill, The Road Act (Amendment) Bill, amendments to the Marriage Act, the modernising of the Civil Aviation legislation and the amendment of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport Corporation Act are some of the important pieces of legislation which his government will address.
The AG said that he cannot speak definitively for the government whether the campaign financing laws are high on its agenda but mentioned that his government will be in office for five years and therefore has time to work on getting the piece of legislation ready. “It’s a five year term; we can’t pack everything into the first two years.”
Conversely, colleagues in the Alliance for Change had reported about a week ago that campaign financing legislation were part of its immediate priorities.

Minister of Legal Affairs, Basil Williams

General-Secretary of the AFC and Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson had said that campaign financing will be on the legislative agenda of Parliament when it comes out of recess.
Last April, President David Granger had renewed his government’s commitment to enacting Campaign Financing legislation before the 2020 General and Regional Elections.
The law is expected to monitor the source of campaign funding to ensure that there is a fair playing field when parties are to access resources.
Some financial commentators have spoken out on the absence of the legislation. Chartered Accountant Anand Goolsarran had said recently that political parties are not serious about implementing the law since they are heavily dependent on the funding and as such would not want to disclose the names of donors.
In an interview with this publication, Goolsarran said that if political parties benefit from contributions towards their campaigns, they would do everything possible to frustrate efforts to have the legislation in place.

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