Campaign financing: Devil's in the details

As expected, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission's (IEBC) announcement of a cap on political campaign funding was going to elicit reactions. Ironically, most of the noise is coming from the politicians.

No doubt, the proposed regulations have good intentions; they are progressive and forward-looking. They seek to free the country from the clutches of monied cartels and influence peddlers.

One reads the new rules as an attempt by the IEBC to level the playing field to ensure fairness is upheld and avoid a situation where big money adulterates politics to the detriment of the populace. Cash and gifts offered during electioneering often induce voters to vote in a certain way.

And an unregulated campaign-funding regime makes it easier for non-political players to sway voters in a certain direction.

Frankly speaking, the aim of spending money in a campaign is to woo voters to one's side and thereby secure a maximum vote share. Rarely do we see the not-so- well-to-do romping into victory. And so though elections are deemed expensive with costs running up to billions by conservative estimates, more and more people are throwing their hats into the ring. Perhaps that is what has prompted IEBC's action.

Yet grave inadequacies in the new rules make it look ill thought-out and rushed. First, it is blind on the source of the money; it assumes that a politician's source of money is personal wealth. Yet that is not true and therein lies the rub.

Kenya's elections are funded through donations from personal savings, proceeds from business, private corporations and minimally, through individual donors. A lot of it, it is feared, comes from illicit sources. And a rule that would shut the taps couldn't have come at a better time.

Obviously, those who give donations to politicians, don't do it out of altruism. No, they seek to influence the decisions of those they support once when they win office. In other democratic jurisdictions, lobbyists rally around social issues of importance that politicians would ideally find no time or resource to articulate: From tax-cuts, sex education, abortion, foreign relations, retirement age and pension issues.

In the US, regulation is meant to limit the influence of donors in an election. This is done through a cap on how much a donor can give. In India, the world's biggest democracy, the Election Commission sets limits for fund-raising and spending. Though politicians have found ways to cut corners and spend more.

Kenya's democracy is not in that league yet. Yet the role of big money in our elections cannot be underestimated. The rise of the "tenderpreneur" culture and its attendant consequences is well documented. Big money have the power to skew outcomes in elections.

Most of the time, this outcome doesn't favour the masses. The opaque nature of our political spending and fund raising thus makes it easy for merchants of power and other influence peddlers to infiltrate the political fabric. The result could only be toxic.

Simply put, "tenderpreneurs" are keen to have their chums in power to assure them of lucrative Government tenders. Electing leaders who are indebted to a cartel of tenderpreneurs offers fertile ground for corruption, black market money and the systematic death of democracy.

The IEBC has provided a roadmap to clean elections, it should be supported. In the same breath, it should go back to the drawing board and draw up something that is workable and enforceable.