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XLV Policy Roundtable of the OAS Debates Campaign Financing in Latin America

The XLV Policy Roundtable of the Organization of American States (OAS) today was the scenario for the presentation of a publication on "Funding of Political Parties in Latin America", coordinated by Pablo Gutierrez, former Director of the OAS Department of Electoral Cooperation and Observation and Daniel Zovatto, Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean of International IDEA.

In his welcoming remarks, the Chief of Staff of the OAS Secretary General, Ambassador Hugo de Zela, emphasized the importance of the issue of election observation for the organization, and noted that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the first mission of this type led by the OAS. The role of the organization in these matters, he said, stems from the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which in Article 5 calls for the establishment of a balanced and transparent system for the financing of the activities of political parties. To that end, said Ambassador De Zela, the OAS has developed a process of "perfecting our electoral observation," to which the publication represents an important contribution.

The book was introduced by the Permanent Observer for International IDEA to the United Nations, Massimo Tommasoli, who explained that the study revolves around two questions: "How to avoid money from obscure sources in the financing of political parties and election campaigns?", and "how to ensure an equitable distribution of resources among political parties?" From these questions, the analysis is divided into four main topics covered in the publication: the relationship between money and politics, the cost of operation of democracy, the use of money and the legitimacy of democratic processes, and the regulation of political financing.

In his presentation, Tommasoli recognized that while democracy is priceless, its functioning does have a price, and the use of economic resources is an essential element for democratic competence. "The money in politics is capable of introducing distortions if there is unequal distribution," he cautioned, and said that "if the use of funds is not regulated, it can threaten the legitimacy of the democratic processes and practices."

The publication contains 18 regional reports linking fairness and transparency to the quality of democracy. In that regards, the OAS Acting Director of the Department for Electoral Cooperation and Observation (DECO) Betilde Muñoz-Pogossian, referred to four variables to evaluate these aspects: the nature of funding and its origin (public, private or mixed), the evaluation of the regulation on access to financing, accountability and access to information, the control bodies and sanctions. Based on these variables, Muñoz-Pogossian highlighted some of the relevant data from the publication, including that 16 of the 18 countries studied enjoy some form of direct public funding. Thirteen countries provide permanent public funding for political parties, of those, two provide this funding based on the sovereign decisions of each party.

On the issue of the use of media for campaigns, as quoted by the OAS official, in 15 countries of the region there is a reserved time for electoral campaign in public media, either mandatory or voluntary. In the current regional context, four countries ban paid political advertising on television, four do not provide any limit, and all the other countries provide some sort of limitation on paid advertising. The full report is available in Spanish here.

Following the presentation of the publication, the Secretary of External Relations of the OAS, Alfonso Quiñonez, moderated a panel discussion on the theme that included Marta Lucia Ramirez, President of the Citizens in Action Foundation and former Minister of Defense and Foreign Trade of Colombia; Gerardo Solis, President of the Electoral Tribunal of Panama; and Arturo Nuñez, Governor-elect of the Mexican state of Tabasco and former Vice President of the Senate of Mexico.

Former Minister Ramírez said that "the challenge of the transparency of political activity depends completely on clarity in the management of campaigns, and obviously that depends on political will." She explained some of the challenges facing Colombia in terms of political financing, including the lack of transparency and political will, and the deterioration of public trust, and emphasized that the importance of the subject goes to the very legitimacy and recognition of democracy: "In the end, what it is about is achieving credibility and legitimacy on the part of political parties, and if we could achieve that I think we would have much less concern and criticism from the people about how much democracy costs."

The head of Panama's Electoral Tribunal, Gerardo Solís, explained that in his country political financing is coordinated through a mixed public-private system, in which "transparency is a core value." The reforms are unending, he said, because after each election, there is a regular process for conducting study and a discussion of the process of reforms. Looking ahead, Solis called for the establishment at the regional level of "a substantive body that brings together best practices and a procedural law that allows for their implementation, so we can all move toward a common standard, to strengthen our democracies." "The health of democracy depends on one detail, the electoral process; and the electoral process depends on the health of the entities responsible for monitoring to ensure the purity and freedom of the vote," he concluded.

For his part, the Governor-elect of Tabasco, Arturo Núñez, said that "public financing is a fundamental element to the quality of democracy" because " parties are fundamental to democracy and when parties are weak, democracy is weak." Therefore, he explained, in Mexico "it has been established at the constitutional level that public financing takes precedence over private." His country, he said, faces other challenges, including the risk of the influence of drug money, and the fact that almost half of the country lives in poverty, raising the risk of the buying and selling of votes, sometimes through social programs. In conclusion, Arturo Núñez said, "citizens' preferences should be determined by the benefits of the proposed programs, the career and quality of the candidates, and not by campaign financing."

The Secretary for Political Affairs of the OAS, Kevin Casas-Zamora, closed the event by stating that the study of political finance "forms part of a broader effort to expand the lens of our electoral observation work to incorporate those increasingly sophisticated elements that threaten the integrity of the electoral process in Latin America." Casas-Zamora highlighted the "tremendous value" of the publication, calling it "a great effort to synthesize many of the things we know of political financing in the region," adding that, despite the known difficulties and complexities of regulating such financing, studies like the one presented today represent a breakthrough because "if we are not capable of understanding what is happening, we can’t very well regulate it."

A gallery of photos of the event is available here.

The video of the event is available here.

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: E-359/12