To improve the regulations on campaign financing for announced elections

Organization Transparency – Serbia, on the occasion of announcement that presidential and local elections could be held on fall this year, warns the public that it would be wrong, judging on the bases of so far experience, if the new elections are held before improving of regulations on election campaign financing.

We consider that it is necessary to urgently change and amend the Law on Political Party Financing (2003), by which financing of election campaign is regulated, to fulfill its anticorruption function completely. This especially goes for provisions on local elections' campaign financing, which are interpreted in the past in different ways and where even minimum of publicity and financial reports' control wasn't secured. Announced changes of election system also make necessary to change in appropriate way regulations on campaign financing. Transparency – Serbia nearly three years ago gave 25 recommendations for amending the law which could serve as starting point for those reforms.

We also mark that it would be fatal for Serbian citizens' trust in democratic institutions if the new election process would start before it is determined in unambiguous way whether the regulations on campaign financing were violated during January parliamentary elections (2007). Having in mind numerous indications that Republican Electoral Committee hasn't performed its control function in appropriate way, especially because it accepted uncritically incomplete report of authorized auditors employed in National Assembly service, we consider that before new elections comprehensive and objective evaluation on respect of obligations from the Law on Political Party Financing should be given.

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