KDI Publishes the Report on Monitoring the Pre-election Campaign Expenditures 2010
Prishtina, 24 March 2011 - Within the CRINIS project (shining a light on money in politics) the Kosova Democratic Institute (KDI) has monitored the costs of political entities during the pre-election campaign for the General Elections for the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo, dated 12 December 2010, starting from 1 until 10 December 2010.
During the monitoring of this campaign, KDI issued very important data which reveal the willingness of political subjects to make their finances transparent, and also, when and in what aspects, they have violated the laws and regulations in force, solely for aiming to not make transparent the ways they are financed.
KDI’s findings show the major violations that the political subjects have made during the campaign for 2010: underestimation of costs, non-declaration of assets, partial declaration or even non-declaration of total incomes and costs, non-declaration of private donors, missing evidence which proves the costs, non-declaration of bank statements, submission of Financial Declarations after the deadline which is foreseen in the law, as well the expenditure beyond the limit which is allowed by the law.
Similar problems highlighted by Kosovo’s Auditor General during the local election campaign of 2009
Even though the Auditor General’s Office had provided concrete recommendations to avoid such violations, political entities continue to behave in the same manner, making the latter irresponsible and address for frequent critics by civil society organisations.
Meanwhile, amongst the political entities that did not submit the Financial Declaration in 2009 are: AAK, LDK, and PDK. Moreover, the amounts declared at CEC for 2010, do not correspond with the amounts that KDI evidenced during the monitoring of 2010 Election Campaign, a fact that questions most of the political subjects Financial Declarations submitted at CEC.
Merita Mustafa, programme manager of Transparency and Anti-corruption said that; according to the data that KDI has evidenced, it can be concluded that political entities did not change their approach in making their finances transparent, which gives them less rights to convince the public opinion for their commitment for guaranteeing a transparent and accountable governance.
“Furthermore, the Fund from the state dedicated for financing the central and local electoral campaigns, for regular and extraordinary elections, allocates funds proposed by the Government not exceeding 0.05 % of Kosovo Budget.
“This means that from the abovementioned Fund, solely for the purpose of financing the election campaign in 2010 were allocated 628.000 Euros, 90 % of which were divided between the political parties according to the number of seats in the Assembly from the previous election/mandate, and “10 % of the funds shall be allocated proportionally to recently registered political subjects and certified ones by the Central Election Committee.”
These statements were made from Mrs. Mustafa during the media conference where this report was published, meanwhile she added that, the maximum amount of spending that political entity shall not exceed is 815,318 Euro.
From the results of monitoring the costs of political entities campaign, KDI has evidenced that PDK is the political entity that has spent the most amounting 1,004,814 Euro, exceeding the maximum of 815,318 Euro (0.50 Euro per registered voter) set by the CEC. LDK comes second with 608,037 Euro spent, AKR with 553,738 Euro spent, AAK with 459,521 Euro spent, LDD with 140,186 Euro spent, Vetëvendosje with 105,017 Euro spent, KDTP with 74,431 Euro spent, FER with 66,507 Euro spent, and SLS is ranked the ninth with 50,661 Euro spent during the campaign.
Meanwhile, from the data provided by the CEC, until 22 March 2011, PDK declared 145,984 Euro (without the Financial Declarations of 30 municipalities), LDK declared 296,751 Euro, AKR declared 401,834 Euro, AAK declared 176,885 Euro, LDD declared 6,540 Euro, Vetëvendosje declared 91,425 Euro, KDTP declared 32,080 Euro, FER declared 75,006 Euro. On the other hand, SLS has initially submitted its Financial Declaration to CEC, but has withdrawn it back, as a result of which KDI could not see the content of this document.
According to the report, the biggest expenses that political entities have managed to spend according to the category of activities are: meetings with citizens amounting 2,249,276 Euro, transmission of video spots on TV channels amounting 519,850 Euro, advertising in the daily newspapers amounting 257,553 Euro, in web portals amounting 29,224 Euro, and in radios amounting 7,010 Euro.
Download the report on pre-election campaign expenditure in Kosovo December 2010 elections here.
Background
CRINIS project is a concept developed by Transparency International (TI) the world well-known organisation, and has been implemented in many countries around the world. Lately, it is also being implemented in Albania, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia, with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Norway.
The aim of this project is to evaluate the legal framework and the implementation of it in the aspect of transparency of the finances in politics. Based on the results of this study, KDI develops advocating activities to make reforms, aiming at improving this legal framework and implementing the latter.
For any press enquiries please contact
Mr Ismet Kryezu, Executive Director
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