{"id":8251,"date":"2011-05-03T08:51:54","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T12:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/?p=8251"},"modified":"2011-05-03T08:51:54","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T12:51:54","slug":"sears-outlaw-secret-contributions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2011\/05\/sears-outlaw-secret-contributions","title":{"rendered":"Sears: Outlaw Secret Contributions"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>PLP MP for Fort Charlotte has joined BahamasB2B&#8217;s call to have secret political contributions outlawed as  the 2012 General Election gets underway.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Former attorney general and cabinet  minister, Alfred Sears, who also served as minister of education in the Christie  administration from 2002 to 2007, said publicly financed elections need  to be &#8220;transparent.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">Mr. Sears says he has &#8220;consistently&#8221; called on and  encouraged his colleagues to take a stand and make it a priority in its  &#8220;commitment to the Bahamian people&#8221; to legislate campaign finance  reform.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have called on the Opposition and the government, I  will continue to do so because I do think it\u2019s a form of corruption and  it undermines public trust and confidence and it also can compromise  the governance process of our country,&#8221; Mr. Sears said yesterday.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">The need for  campaign finance reform was highlighted by some political observers in  2004 after Bahamas permanent resident Mohammad Harajchi claimed that he  had contributed millions of dollars to the PLP\u2019s 2002 campaign, and  claimed he had even done personal favours for some government officials  while they were in opposition on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n<p>The issue of money in politics was also underscored  during the 2002 campaign as the main political parties staged rallies  that became top class productions and purchased expensive and high  quality paraphernalia to help energize their campaigns.<\/p>\n<p>Leaders of both parties, knowing that disclosure would ruin them, have publicly stated that they see no need for campaign finance reform.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PLP MP for Fort Charlotte has joined BahamasB2B&#8217;s call to have secret political contributions outlawed as the 2012 General Election gets underway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[93,174,74,60],"class_list":["post-8251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-corruption","tag-election","tag-fnm","tag-plp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}