PM to B.C.C.I.: “Walk the Walk”

Prime Minister John Briceño

Prime Minister Briceño was also asked about his administration’s position on the Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s draft campaign finance legislation. As we have reported, the B.C.C.I. has formulated draft legislation on which they briefed the media back in January. But is it something the government is prepared to look at?

Prime Minister John Briceño

“We are prepared to look at anything that can work, at the end of the day. The chamber, many of them like to pontificate but they don’t like to walk the walk. I am prepared to take a look at what they have and if it is something that is applicable we are prepared to do so. Look at what is happening in the United States. Everybody likes to talk about United States being the bastion of democracy. Look at how much money it cost to elect a president, about one billion. Look at the dark money that they have. You have what they refer to dark money, these so called NGOs in the United States that pumps hundreds of millions of dollars. Just yesterday I think it was yesterday or day before where the Coke brothers for the 2020 elections spent half a billion dollars in trying to get there candidate elected. Is that what we want? Obviously not, don’t you thing I want to have an election that is going to cost us a lot less? Of course I want to. But we need to have something that is applicable and can work and not that we pass laws where it ties your hands and others can do as they wish.”