Karachi: In the game of financing power and politics, there are no loyalists, all opportunists. Donations--almost always discreetly-- flow from Industrialists, real estate, commodities and stock brokers to seek to win influence with the political party that is thought to be most likely to occupy the seat of power. Backing the right horse is a risk, but a well calculated risk, all the same.
There is private funding of electoral campaigns of individual contestants. But it is always difficult to determine who is giving what to whom. However, the trail of collective campaign contributions can be traced with the collective actions of industrialists, businessmen, brokers and scores of other interested quarters. For instance if stingy business people charter planes to fly to distant destinations to express solidarity with an individual or his party or to notice a stock broker sneak out of a house of a party chief while other major broker is still seated in the corner of the room waiting for an audience with the party leader, it is easy to understand where the loyalty lies. “There is no free lunch”, as the Americans would say, so the bigger the ‘investment’ in party campaigns, the greater the expected future ‘returns’. In a country where the names and number of people with wealth in astronomical figures is known to all, it is easy for political parties as well as powerful contestants to intimidate or strike bargains.
Among the population of 150 million people, there are occasional new faces that are able to make to the Assemblies and scarcely any without the support of a major political party. The number of political parties which assume power by rotation is still fewer. It is therefore easy for the wealthy individuals and various sectors of industry and business to renew relationship afresh with the party and participants whose turn it looks like to form the Government this time around.
Undeniably, like other simple voters, the industrialists, businessmen and others with money do favour candidates and parties on the ethnic and linguistic lines. But that also is more in search of greater comfortable future relationship than the love for ‘biradari’ or similarity of language or creed.
While local business houses and groups of businessmen and industrialists do contribute in cash and kind for their preferred contestants and parties to run a successful electoral campaign, what exactly is the role of multinational corporations?
Campaign financing by MNCs is a controversial issue. A head of a multinational pharmaceutical firm was visibly irritated at a soft suggestion of spending on electoral campaigns. “We are here to do business”, he retorted and added: “It does not matter to us if one or the other party wins the elections”. But knowledgeable people said they would take such statement with a pinch of salt. “There are always persons and parties, who are more generous or liberal with particular industries and also with foreign capital”, they said and added that it would be but natural for multinationals to lend them a helping hand.
It would be difficult for the company’s statutory auditors to pinpoint the figure of such payments, where they are made, on the balance sheets, for they would be lumped with other expenditures. But talking of auditors are not the big five firms of auditors counted among the major donors in electoral campaigns in the US. The American media itself had revealed that two of the greatest financial scandals in the history — those of Enron and WorldCom—were hushed up after the big four exercised their influence in the US Senate. Could the Senators have done them the service for free or was that the payback time for earlier ‘investment’ by the firms in launching them to the seat of power.
