A legal initiative on party financing presented as a consensual work by experts from the bipartisan Electoral Reform Commission was met with criticism and additional suggestions from civil society representatives during a hearing on Wednesday at this commission.
The draft law drafted within the framework of the new electoral reform aims to establish a new legal basis for financing, administration, control, reporting and transparency, for the income and expenses incurred by political parties during the calendar year and outside the election campaign.
The draft law provides for mechanisms for publishing financial data on the dedicated electronic platform of the CEC to allow the public to track transactions and expands the powers of this institution for in-depth verification of these reports.
In the area of restrictions on sources of funding, funding from foreign entities, entities with public contracts, persons with certain criminal records, anonymous donations, etc. are prohibited.
The prohibitions article is considered an article of fundamental importance for preventing unlawful influence and preserving political independence, according to the accompanying report of the initiative.
The list of permissible sources includes membership fees, donations, funding from the state budget, loans and other legal income, while administrative fines are provided for concealing funding.
However, for civil society organizations that monitor electoral processes and were part of the tables for drafting this draft law, the provisions drafted by the commission do not solve the real problems of concealing sources in the financing of political parties, mainly for the election period, and do not provide efficient control and prevention mechanisms for this.
"We are making a law that regulates financing only outside election periods, while the Electoral Code has a section for elections, so we are taking a fragmented approach to regulating the financing of political parties," said Vildan Plepi from the American Democratic Institute (NDI) in the committee.
Plepi offered the organization's recommendations for a coherent regulation of the legal framework on the issue of party financing. He also expressed reservations about the wording provided by the committee's draft law on the control of such financing and the role of institutions in preventing foreign financing or dirty money.
"Institutional oversight needs to be expanded beyond the CEC," he said, adding that "a legal framework is lacking that would enable and oblige institutions to cooperate to prevent dirty money or foreign influence."
Criticism of the new legal provisions was also reinforced by Afrim Krasniqi from the Institute for Political Studies, who said that his organization had submitted 22 written recommendations to the committee for all problematic articles.
Krasniqi told the MPs that their draft essentially did not fulfill the constitutional obligation for transparency of political party finances and also did not offer solutions to the main problems encountered in the recent electoral processes in the country, such as the use of state resources and resources of criminal origin in election campaigns.
He also said he was skeptical about the envisaged state mechanism for financial control. “I don’t think the CEC has the capacity to do it,” he said, suggesting that control by a specialized body, such as the Supreme State Audit Office, would be a more effective solution.
Krasniqi also suggested that sanctions be more effective and that a mechanism be provided for verifying Diaspora funding.
On the other hand, the Albanian Helsinki Committee noted that the parliamentary commission had overlooked previous suggestions from civil society in the drafting and reporting of the legal draft and did not refer to the recent United Nations Anti-Corruption resolution on political financing.
The Executive Director of the AHC, Erida Skëndaj, said that the submitted draft required clarification, supplementation or revision to guarantee effective implementation and avoid interpretative ambiguities.
According to Skëndaj, the practices of Council of Europe member states show that financial control of political parties should be continuous and periodic, and not limited only to election periods. “In this regard, the draft law could strengthen regular monitoring mechanisms,” she added.
Representatives from other civil society organizations expressed their positions, calling for further improvement of the legal draft, while also emphasizing the need for harmonization of laws affecting the financing and regulation of political parties and election campaign financing.
Valbona Kuko from the Westminster Foundation for Democracy stressed that a more comprehensive legal reform was needed, such as drafting a new law on political parties that could include their financing. /BIRN/
