Corruption-free politics -- the blueprint

Over the last 18 months we have brought this innovation to the attention of all of the represented political parties. Now for the first time, we share this hitherto confidential “inside information” with you.

Assuming that all politicians got into politics to help people and that, if given the opportunity, both politicians and political party bosses would choose honest and ethical modes of operation over dubious methods; and assuming that political parties are prepared to sacrifice their soft money streams in the interest of ethical financial sustainability which does not derive from the sale of influence, policy or decision making; we have created a solution which will ensure corruption free politics, while ensuring political autonomy and political solvency through the removal of the need for political donations.

We call them Wholly Sustainable Non-Donor Funded Political Constituency Based Campaign Training Centres or WNPC’s.

Executive Summary of the Operational Plan for WNPC’s — First Public Release January 11 2009.

The following is the original work of Avishkar Parmananden Govender and makes no reference to any other source, person, publication or study of any sort whatsoever.

Preamble:

The purpose of this operational plan is to direct the organisation of political constituency offices such that they are host to political constituency based, campaign training centres, which are wholly sustainable and non-donor funded.

This operational plan lays out a methodological formula which ensures that it is in fact possible for a politician or public representative to conduct his/her affairs, activities and operations both at a plenary and constituency level in a sustainable manner that is non-reliant upon donations from external funders.

The theoretical component to implementing this operational plan is to itemise the whole of the requirements — which a Politician has — to correlate these requirements to a list of service providers, to determine the nature and scope of such service providers, and to determine the nature and scope of the training organisations, which can produce such service providers.

The practical component to implementing this operational plan is to establish a prototype constituency based training centre, housing the training organisations as described and producing the service providers as indicated.

It is therefore also necessary to establish within this constituency based training centre; a non-profit organisation, which is capable of acting as the development funder for the purpose of incubating these start-up training organisations and these start-up service providers as indicated.

88/90 Cross Street GREYVILLE Durban This operational plan is essential, as it has been derived, for the first time, from the experience of the research prototype centre in Durban from 2004 – 2008 and it does provide a model for the operation of political constituency activities in an autonomous manner, which does not jeopordise the political autonomy of the politician and which does not lead to political insolvency.

Objectives:

The objectives of this operational plan are to illustrate a method, which will ensure that:

It is possible for a politician to operate a constituency based training centre as a subdivision of his/her constituency office.
It possible for this constituency based training centre to house all of the training organisations required in order to produce all of the service providers required for the constituency operations of the politician.
It is possible for the political principal to establish within such a centre a non- profit organisation which is able to act as the development funder to incubate the training organisations and service providers as indicated.
It is possible for such a centre to reach sustainability within 18 months.
It is possible that the application of such a centre could be skills training, job creation and micro-enterprise creation for the unemployed people in the constituency of the politician.
It is likely that the beneficiaries of the skills training, job creation and micro-enterprise creation will look favourably upon the politician and choose to band together to form a consortium of service providers to supply the constituency office with its required services.
It is possible for the non-profit development organisation, within the centre, to serve an outreach function which reaches every household in the constituency of the politician.
Given that this model envisages that the cost of conducting the activities of the politician will be reduced to simply the cost of materials; given that the party membership of the politician will have been trained to manufacture and provide all of the required produce; that it is possible to reduce the total cost to campaign to within the existing subsidy provided by the statutory body of which the politician is a member.

Method:

The basis of the method is that training organisations are started up, made sustainable and made capable of producing service providers from the underlying constituency, through a process of skills training and job creation.

The nuance of the method is that, while the programme should be open to all constituents, it is strategically viable to prioritise the training of constituents who are members of the same political party as the politician as this will ensure that there is at least one consortium of service providers who are able to volunteer their time to process the materials required to produce the products and services required for the operation of the political campaign.

Conditions:

The principle of radical subsidiarity is paramount for this model to work effectively. That is that the politician must not exert control either directly or indirectly over anything more than the constituency office.

Self-reliance, cost recovery and minimal subsidies must be a culture, which is inculcated in the training organisations and service providers from the start of the initiative. While all of the training programmes will be fee-paying courses, it is desirable for this fee level to be as competitive and, if possible, as input-cost-pegged as is possible.

Summary and conclusion:

This operational plan is a solution to the problem of political insolvency and the correlated dilemma of political autonomy. As such, by following the method, it will be possible for any implementing person to establish and run such a centre without any donations at all.

It is counter-intuitive for these centres to be established through the receipt of donations or through dependence upon donor funding and neither the author nor the creator, developer and owner of this intellectual property extend any warranty over the results, which may propagate should this model be contaminated through the reliance upon donor funding.