Financing of campaign for local elections :

Local elections are called for 11 May 2008. Rules on campaign financing prescribed by the Law on Financing of Political Parties are implemented in them . Besides all problems which exist in implementation of this Law on Republic Elections , here we have some additional ones , which are so vast that they seriously threat the whole process could become illegal .

Law prescribes obligation that from the municipality budgets , minus transfers , for financing of this election campaign should be secluded 0,05 percent . However , after insight into ten municipality budgets , we determined that very small number of municipalities and cities anticipated this line in their budgets for 2008. ? hat mistake could be corrected with secluding from the budget reserve , but reasonable question is why it came to it at all, when 2008. was in any case year of regular local elections .

Second problem lies in that that all limitations for collecting assets for this campaign are connected with secluding from municipality budget . Due to that , when budget of some municipality is poor , limitations are also like that . For example , 2004 in some poor municipalities neither party could collect for campaign more then 5000 dinars , which is obviously insufficient for campaign even in a small territory . This problem could be overcome with emergency changes of the Law , through which limits for collecting of the assets in a campaign would be connected to some other parameter ( e . g . certain amount of money by one signed voter ) and limitations for donation of one physical and one legal entity unify for territory of hole country and connected for unique parameter (e.g. determined number of average pays ).

Third problem lays in fact that election campaigns are in each municipality separate processes , and that for each of them has to be opened special account and submitted separate reports , and that , on the other side , many parties will have centralized campaigns , e.g. , through advertisements at media with national coverage . This matter should also be resolved by amendments to the Law . Possible ways for that are : prescribing of possibilities to parties which wish to finance local elections campaign in every municipality from one account and to submit one report ; or b ) prescribing of obligation to parties that adequate part of their expenses which is managed through national media pay from accounts opened for the purpose of managing the campaign in certain cities and municipalities . If these regulations are not specified , we will have situation like the one from 2004 when some parties submitted unique reports for whole Serbia , others for each municipality separate , which disabled their comparing and verification of respect of legal limitations .

Fourth problem is control . As we saw , Republic election commission , which is the only institution that has control authorities and for financing of local elections, often does not succeed to manage in appropriate way to fulfill their tasks after the republic elections . Obvious is that in situation when REC receives reports from more than 160 municipalities their possibilities to make adequate control in legal deadline would be far lesser . Because of that would be necessary to secure additional assets for verification of this reports , or to transfer part of REC job to municipality election commissions .

March 5. 2008

Press Office

Transaprency Serbia