Money and democracy: the dangers of unregulated campaign finance.
| Autor | Reynolds, Louisa |
Money was no object for Manuel de Jesus "Manolito" Castillo, a former congressman who ran for mayor in Guatemala's eastern department of Jutiapa in 2007. Manolito wooed voters by raffling cars, houses, purebred horses, and cell phones, donating ambulances to the local health clinic, and throwing lavish parties where alcohol flowed and copious amounts of free food were distributed.
Media speculation surrounding the origins of Manolito's fortune was rife. The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had had its eye on him for years as the suspected leader of the Jutiapa drug cartel and his visa to enter the US had been revoked. After his alleged connections to the drug trade had been exposed, he had been expelled from the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), one of the country's biggest parties.
Undeterred, he founded his own "civic committee" (a temporary political organization created to take part in mayoral elections) and won a landslide victory. However, a year later he was arrested for his involvement in the high-profile murder of four Salvadoran congressmen and their driver in 2007 and is currently serving a life sentence (NotiCen, Aug. 2, 2007).
The Manolito case highlighted one of the greatest perils associated with unregulated political finance in Latin America: an increase in campaigns funded by organized crime and a rising tide of violence as mafias use their muscle to secure the victory of their candidates.
The study "Funding of Political Parties in Latin America," published by the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2011, also cites the election campaigns of former Presidents Jaime Paz Zamora in Bolivia, Ernesto Samper in Colombia, and Ernesto Perez Balladares in Panama in the 1990s as some of the clearest examples of the penetration of drug cartels in election campaigns, a risk that is particularly acute in a context in which most Latin American countries have decentralized the voting process and local politics plays an increasingly important role.
"We're not just talking about political parties breaking the rules and exceeding the limits on campaign funding imposed by the law; we're talking about organized crime funding election campaigns, which represents a serious threat to democratic order," says Carlos Navarro Fierro, director of the International Affairs Unit of Mexico's Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE).
As well as drug cartels, other criminal actors such as Colombia's paramilitary groups have also been known to finance...
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