Valor Econômico - Special Section - Fighting Corruption - 17/08/2012

Is public financing of election campaigns a decisive step in the fight against corruption? The theme is controversial. All, however, agree on one point: the urgent need to make the process more transparent, in order to strengthen democracy and make it more representative. The key issue is to make it clear “who finances whom”, which is essential for voters to be able to know the links between candidates and companies. And to be able to assess how the politician positions himself when choosing between the public interest and those who paid for the campaign's expenses.

“Economic power is of fundamental importance in the financing of increasingly costly political campaigns. Even to value representative democracy, it would be interesting to advance the public financing model ”, says the president of the Ethos Institute, Jorge Abrahão. “You can't have the illusion that public funding will end corruption, even because it won't make people more honest,” says the professor at the Law Faculty of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro (FGV-Rio), Pedro Abramovay. "There is no evidence that the form of financing increases the chances of fighting corruption", explains the president of the Brazilian Association of Political Science and professor in the Department of Political Science at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Leonardo Avritzer.

Public funding for campaigns has advanced in several countries since the second half of the 2010th century, as shown in the work “Corporate responsibility in the electoral process” carried out in 59 by the Ethos Institute and Transparency International. But if it was present in 2003% of democratic countries in 1995, as found by the NGO Idea International, in none of them were the expenses of the elections paid for exclusively with state resources. In Brazil, this financing has become more significant since XNUMX with the creation of the Party Fund.

It is impossible to know how much the fund actually represents in the total revenue of the parties because a significant part of the donations is still made "under the hood". “It is not possible to underestimate the economic power of large companies. They win bids, over-bill prices through additives and finance campaigns with funds from Caixa 2 ”, comments Avritzer. "In this context, public funding can increase transparency and decrease corruption." But who guarantees that companies will not continue to support their candidates? “Purely public financing does not solve the problem and can be even worse. Some candidates will continue to receive funds from companies even less transparently than they are now, ”says Tiago Bottino, professor of criminal law at FGV-Rio University of Law.

However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that private financing privileges politicians with access to the resources of the business world. “Some candidates spend a considerable part of the warrants raising funds to finance the campaigns. Some do it lawfully, others do it illegally, which opens up a huge loophole for corruption, ”explains Abramovay. In this context, public resources can make the dispute for votes more equal, in these times when electoral expenses rise to the stratosphere.

In 2008, the 11 candidates for the City of São Paulo declared to the Electoral Court that they would spend R $ 96,1 million. This year, the 12 candidates expect to spend R $ 341,5 million, 255% more.

For specialists, more important than the source of funds for electoral financing is the transparency of the process, the establishment of clear rules and the inspection to guarantee compliance. And, also, the setting of tougher penalties for those who deviate from the route, such as the ineligibility of those who are convicted by the Electoral Justice for a certain period of time. In these elections, some electoral judges are demanding candidates to adopt the principles of the Transparency Law.