Law on political parties is not good enough to avoid corruption: NGO - CORRECTION

The law on political parties contains many deficiencies and it is not good enough for not allowing corruption penetrate in the area of politics. This is the opinion of the representatives of the non-governmental organizations who took part in the sitting of the Journalistic Investigation Club with the topic: “Financing political parties and electoral campaigns: corruptibility risks in the 2009 parliamentary elections,” Info-Prim Neo reports. An expert with Transparency International – Moldova, Efim Obreja, said that the proposals launched by the association till adopting the law were not taken into consideration. The document doesn’t provide clearly the way of financing the political parties and their activity in the electoral campaign, and the norms for ensuring transparency of financing the parties are insufficient. [“The norms regarding donations arouse anxiety, because the stipulation which allows the natural entities finance the political parties with 500 minimum salaries annually and the legal entities – with 1000 minimum salaries, is exaggerated, as it doesn’t correspond to the people’s standard of living,” Efim Obreja said. “Resulting from the monthly average salary for 2008, the maximum donations amount to about 1.3 million lei and 2.6 million lei, respectively, that is very much,” Obreja said, adding that this thing could mean buying the political party, that runs counter to the same law. “Financing the parties with 2-3 minimum salaries annually is allowed in Europe,” the expert said. He also expressed his concern with the fact that there was no regulation as to the amount of the donation and when it is exceeded it is necessary that the donor’s identity is identified and made public.] The participants in the discussion also evinced their concern for the way the financial activity of the political parties is supervised. Normally, the political parties should be those which make the financial reports public, but in the conditions of the present legislation this thing is made by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC), said Corneliu Gurin, the representative of the Corruption Analysis and Prevention Center (CAPC), who made the expertise report to the draft law on political parties. According to him, certain provisions of the law are very unclear, so that they can have many significances. The State Fiscal Service performs the financial checking of the political parties, but during the electoral campaign, the CEC deals with this, and this multitude of institutions which make the financial verifications of the parties means nothing but a less transparency, Corneliu Gurin added. He also said that the information about the in-flows of the political parties are usually made public just after the elections, though the ordinary people would like to know about their incomes earlier, in order to see which of the politicians will better represent their interests and, implicitly, whom they should give their votes to, the CAPC expert added. Cornelia Cozonac, the president of the Investigative Journalism Center, said that the financial resources of political parties are not transparent. “There are parties with very luxurious quarters, but the financing sources of their buildings are not known,” Cozonac said. A politician is corrupt when he buys votes, when he uses the administrative resources in his own interests, when he misuses his position, when he peculates the public resources, makes protectionism, etc., the participants in the sitting explained. The law on political parties was adopted at the end of 2007 and was enacted on February 29, 2008.