Poll agency advocates sanctions for party-funding offences

Parliament should pay particular attention to sanctions to be imposed on transgressors when developing policy on funding and donations, the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) has told the ad hoc committee on private political party funding.

Unlike many other democracies, SA remains largely unregulated when it comes to funding of political parties by private persons and organisations.

IEC deputy chairman Terry Tselane told the committee on Thursday that sanctions should be carefully considered as part of any new set of rules to ensure that action was actually taken against transgressors in the fair enforcement of the law.

“If private funding is regulated, it would be worthwhile to revisit provisions aimed at blocking parties from investing in private interests using allocated funds. It’s not advisable that conditional funding be made available to nonrepresented parties,” said Tselane.

He mentioned the Political Finance Act, which covered aspects of party and candidate finance. The IEC supported the idea of all party funding being managed by a single entity. Regulations around funding should apply not only to parties, but to their candidates too.

“Regulations will have to include sanctions that have not yet been considered. You may also use the mechanisms that are already in the legislation when it comes to dealing with transgressions in this particular aspect,” he said.

Law on political party funding should ideally take into account factors such as reducing the risk of corruption in elections and comprehensive frameworks to deal with national, provincial and local political parties as well as their candidates, Tselane said.

DA member of the ad hoc committee James Selfe told the IEC delegation that there was no room for ambiguity when it came to matters such as foreign funding. The IEC had to be clear about whether this included people who lived outside SA and who might want to fund a political party of their choice.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve complained about the abuse of state resources. If you want to have regulation of private resources, you must regulate state resources. Those need to be a backbone to deal with the abuse of state resources where it happens,” said Selfe.

An ad hoc committee member for the ANC, Mlindwa Gumede, said private political party funding needed to be transparent because foreign organisations and governments were donating funds to instigate regime change in African democracies.

Rich countries donated to parties in poorer countries to influence governments, he said.