Gov’t Blocks Monitoring of Campaign Expenses

The process to monitor election campaign spending of political parties has remained blocked because the government has so far failed to approve the necessary funding for the Central Election Commission (KQZ).

Based on the McAllister+ agreement from June 18, later approved by Parliament, the KQZ is charged with closely follow all party expenses during the 30 days of political campaigning. In order to do so it would receive funds to hire external experts. But even though meetings and rallies have now been held for days, the KQZ still didn’t start its work.

A representative of the KQZ declared that it had requested the Ministry of Finance, which is currently in the hands of a technical minister selected by opposition party PD, to approve the funds necessary to hire 24 accountants to inspect the party expenses.

In spite of the very limited time that is available, the KQZ worked intensively on drafting and approving legal acts related to the monitoring of the campaign for the June 25 elections. As soon as the Ministry of Finance approves the requested fund, the KQZ will nominate the accountants which will being the control and monitoring.

The KQZ has already trained the auditing experts which will have to closely follow the activities of the parties to uncover the expenses for all activities undertaken during the electoral campaign.