Political parties talk about everything except their finances!
Author: Fjori Sinoruka
The Constitution, the law on political parties, the electoral code require the financial transparency of political parties. The financial transparency of political parties resembles legends. Much is said about them, but few are seen.
Few people know that we all pay for political parties. Political parties, in power or opposition, in Parliament or outside it, newly created or with 30 years of experience, are paid from the state budget.
But what is not known is how the political parties spend the money. It is not only the budget money, the parties receive funds from the membership and have the right to create sources of income according to the law.
The Albanian Center for Quality Journalism sent a request for information to the 3 main parties in the country, the Socialist Party of Albania, the Democratic Party of Albania and the Socialist Movement for Integration, to find out how many members each of these parties has in Albania and what the quota is monthly that members pay, but until the time of publication of this article has not received a response.
The membership contribution is not recognized, nor are the incomes generated by the economic activities that the parties may perform.
Follow the money is a famous piece of advice for anyone who wants to uncover corruption. In fact, the need to learn about the financing of the three largest political parties in the country starts from a constitutional obligation that the 127 political parties operating in Albania have. (in the last elections, the number of competing parties fluctuated from 60-70 parties)
Article 9 of the Constitution states that "the financial resources of political parties and their expenses are always made public".
But this article, since November 29, 1998, the day the Constitution entered into force, has not been implemented.
If you take a look at the official websites of the 3 parliamentary political parties, PS, PD, and LSI, for PD and SP there is no information about the budget and finances, while on the official website of LSI, the latter has a category related to bUDGET, but the latest information is about the budget of three years ago, in 2017.
In the law "For political parties” it is determined that the “burden of responsibility” to monitor the source of funding of political parties as well as their expenses rests with the Central Election Commission, which conducts financial audits of political entities.
On the other hand, political parties must submit to the CEC their financial reports, including the financial reports of election campaigns once a year.
The law also determines how political parties should be financed from the state budget, membership quotas and non-public funds.
CEC - the formal auditor of election campaigns
Political parties have a legal obligation to declare their financial resources and expenses during the campaign to the Central Election Commission, they also submit financial reports during the election campaigns to this institution.
The documents show that for the 2017 election campaign, the Socialist Party of Albania had a total income of 93,882,849 ALL, of which 28,044,942 ALL came from public funds, 9,213,274 ALL from natural persons and 56,634,633 were declared as income generated by the entity itself.
While the Democratic Party of Albania for the 2017 election campaign, had a total income of ALL 88,045,551 and stated that these are incomes provided only by public funds.
LSI, the third party in terms of size, has declared a total income of 75,283,960 ALL, of which 23,499,960 ALL comes from public funds, 13,967,727 from natural persons, 24,325 from legal entities and 626 ALL created.
In none of the declaration cases, details or identification of natural persons who have donated money to political parties are given.
A survey carried out by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the Albanian Institute for Entrepreneurship on the expenses of the 2017 parliamentary election campaign, clearly shows that the expenses for the election campaigns are much higher than declared.
The report recommends that the current law that oversees the functioning of political parties should be changed.
"The current law does not have enough power to force political parties to declare expenses and income during election campaigns. Political parties in Albania are public organizations but behave as if they are private, which makes it difficult to supervise them through constitutional mechanisms", the report emphasizes.
Alfrim Krasniqi, who heads the Institute of Political Studies, says that political parties are not transparent in their declarations of funding sources.
"The law is unenforceable, especially by the big parties, and the other problem is that the experts appointed by the CEC to control the finances of political parties are paid by the parties themselves, so they have neither the opportunity nor the mechanisms to do a real control"
Political parties use public funds for their daily activities and for election campaigns, but they are not subject to control by the State Supreme Audit Office (SSA).
KLSH says that there is a technical problem that prevents it. State budget funds do not appear as a separate item.
KLSH has the task of controlling the use of funds that have been given from the state budget to political parties and associations.
For its part, the KLSH fears that the findings and recommendations of its auditors would be interpreted by political parties as a political attack, undermining "credibility as an independent constitutional institution".
KLSH also has its "hands tied" by the decision No. 33, dated 09.05. 2001, of the Constitutional Court, which says that political parties "constitutionally and legally cannot be equated with state institutions..." and the fatal sentence is... "political parties remain outside the grouping of legal subjects to be controlled for their economic activity and financial.
In the absence of KLSH auditors, it remains for the political parties themselves to make their financing transparent.
"No political party does financial transparency and the main violators of the law are the big political parties. Take the last case, we had a three-day congress and a meeting in Tirana, with luxury expenses in technology, in decor, in halls, in reception, in guests, etc., and there is still no public record of who pays for them . When this happens on the days when the reform commission is gathered and under pressure to decide on the reform of financial transparency, imagine what happens during electoral campaigns", Krasniqi emphasizes.
U.S. too report of the last OSCE - ODHIR for local elections, it is emphasized that one of the unaddressed recommendations is transparency in the financing of political party campaigns.
For the last parliamentary elections of 2017, the report highlights the lack of transparency.
"Subsequent regulations dealing with campaigning lacked consistency and clarity, and they failed to provide proper campaign finance transparency prior to Election Day.” – underlines the OSCE-ODHIR report.
Campaign finance rules have been getting stricter, but their implementation remains more formal.
According to the Electoral Code, each party must record in a special register, approved as a model by decision of the CEC, the amount of funds received for each natural or legal person, as well as other data related to the clear identification of the donor . At the moment of the donation, the donor signs a declaration, where he pledges that he is not in one of the circumstances defined in Article 89 of this Code and bears personal responsibility for false declaration. The form and content of the declaration is approved by the CEC and is mandatory to be signed in every case of donation.
On paper this is an obligation aimed at maximum transparency. But even this detailed obligation has so far remained within the bounds of formality.
In the same way, the constitutional obligation that the funding sources of the parties and their expenses are made public at all times has remained on paper.
It has been more than 22 years since this constitutional obligation remained on paper!
