Oneword

This is the seventh edition of Corruption Tracker and the final one for 2007. Each month Corruption Tracker is emailed as an electronic bulletin to a range of institutions, organisations and individuals. If you have any comments that could help Insight to improve Corruption Tracker, please email your thoughts to Tileni Mongudhi at tileni@insight.com.na. The next edition will be distributed at the end of January 2008

Who funds our political parties and what do they do with the millions of dollars they receive in taxpayers’ money? The short answer is that no one, apart from the parties themselves, knows.

The only legislation which mentions party funding is the Electoral Act, which makes it a legal requirement that parties disclose foreign funding. However, the Act doesn’t specify how this disclosure should take place.

The parliamentary select committee which recommended the state funding of parties in 1996, also said parties receiving taxpayers’ money should have their annual audited accounts published in the Government Gazette. But, even though the parties combined are now receiving over N$15 million each year, no party has ever submitted its accounts for publication.

The current murky picture regarding party funding leaves plenty of room for speculation and corruption. No surprise then that the issue of funding also becomes a political football.

The Swapo Party Youth League accuses the newly formed Rally for Democracy and Progress of receiving money from the Swedish government (dismissed as “ridiculous” by the Swedes).

Opposition parties question how much ‘in kind’ funding the ruling party receives from our own government. For example, who paid for the glossy government report to the Swapo Congress or the printed edition of President Pohamba’s speech?

It is not just the ruling party – the funding of opposition parties is equally opaque.

Most pertinently for Corruption Tracker, do all the secret donors involved in Namibian politics expect and receive favours in the forms of kick-backs, contracts, jobs and other forms of favouritism?

Transparency International recommends baseline standards for party fi nancing. These include the general point that the public should have access to information about how parties and candidates are fundedand that regulations governing party funding should be enforced by a strong, independent authority.

The introduction of such measures in Namibia would diminish the possibility of political funding being used as a form of bribery to gain favours and the unhelpful name-calling about foreign backers that is almost bound to be a feature in the run-up to the next election.

In addition, such regulations would improve the integrity of the auditing processes within the parties.

At the moment there is no legal mechanism in place. But while the parties themselves might be complacent about the matter, several key bodies and groups could take a lead. Those currently reviewing electoral legislation should recognise that the current clause on foreign funding does not work. It needs to be replaced by a comprehensive set of rules about the disclosure of funding.

The Auditor General’s office should be pro-active in offering to audit parties accounts and ensuring it has the legal power to do this. The Anti- Corruption Commission should be involved as it has the mandate to ensure “practices, systems, and procedures” facilitate the discovery of corruption.

Perhaps most importantly, President Pohamba can give meaning to his zero tolerance for corruption pledge by making the introduction of effective regulations on party funding a requirement ahead of the next election.