February 17, 2008	Sunday	Safar 09, 1429

KARACHI: Nobody could probably deny the fact that a good part of election expenses is financed by the top trade and industry in different modes both collectively in the form of groups and individually depending on the demand from the contenders of power.

The business elite funding is, however, not typical of Pakistani electioneering, top business in the US, India and Britain also play a significant role in the formation of future governments in their respective countries.

There are various modes of election funding by the business, well-known among them are: donations to parties funding outside the known sources of incomes and the latest one is coined as “Goli that too at the forehead if amount demand is not arranged”.

Election spending by the contenders of power is massive but the actual figure is pretty hard to reach. All is said to be guess work amounting, of course, to millions of rupees.

Anyway it is not a bad investment in more than one ways, notably if the party or the individual on which huge investment was made, wins the election.

Some put the return figure on investment, at 1 to Rs100. Some others say it could be as higher as 1 to Rs1,000 depending on the majority of seats the party wins and forms the government at the centre.

A leading broker who has recently joined the elite club defines investment in elections as under: Speculative is that which is made before the deadline of election day and the party or the individual to gear up their electioneering. If the party loses the election all the money goes into the drain.

“But the safe bet is after the election as by that time the party position is fully known,” he said, adding “it was the time when parties need enormous liquid cash to win over the independents or ‘loatas’ they have a price and shrewd investors mostly come to the aid of money-starved parties at that time”.

However, one thing is clear. That it is always good to operate in unison in a elite club as it jointly assume the position to force their financed party to tailor trade and industry policies, which suit them both on long- and short-term basis, this appears to be consensus thinking among the party ‘funders’.

There are, however, selfless party leaders also. Some of them are those whom the party refuses to finance his election campaign for various reasons including his capacity to win the election.

There are exceptions too. I personally know a party leader who never asks for party funds.