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Enact election laws urgently to make campaign funding accountable: Elections Chief
View(s):Elections Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya says election laws need to be amended urgently, so as to make election funding a more transparent process. “In future, political parties and candidates must be made to declare how much money they spend on election related activities, while there should be an audit of such funds as well,” said Commissioner Deshapriya.
He said the law should also make it mandatory for political parties and candidates to declare their sources of funding, so that the public would be aware where the money comes from. The Commissioner‘s remarks came after Monday’s general elections, for which campaign some candidates on all sides spent millions of rupees on advertising and election related activity.
The European Union (EU) Election Observation Mission, in its Preliminary Statement, also commented on unregulated election financing in the country.“Party and campaign finance are not regulated; there are no requirements regarding campaign spending limits or disclosure of donations and expenditures. According to interlocutors, the campaign was very costly, with some candidates spending above euro 500,000 (over Rs75 million), an EU preliminary report said.
Commissioner Deshapriya said the country had a ceiling on how much money a party could spend during an election campaign prior to 1977, but with the introduction of the Proportional Representation (PR) system of electing MPs, the ceiling was lifted.
“It may be difficult to have a ceiling in place, as now a candidate has to campaign across an entire district, unlike before 1977, when each candidate contested only in one electorate, and hence, the expenses were less,” he said.
He said that, if the PR system is to be retained, the law should make it mandatory for parties to campaign collectively and not individually. “If you want to win under this system, political parties must realise they have to work together like a group of birds who have been caught in the net. If they try collectively, they can lift the net and fly away, otherwise they will all get trapped,” he said.
The Commissioner added that provision must also be made to update the electoral register mid-year, so that voters who are unable to hand over the forms on time, as they were absent from their homes, can do so. “Those who could not vote in the January presidential election could not vote in this election as well, as we used the 2014 electoral register, At present, we have no system of updating the register mid-way. Hence, some eligible citizens lose their vote,” he added.
The Commissioner also said new laws should includse a system where people engaged in essential services including the health sector, ports and airports, media personnel, etc. are allowed to vote from their places of work. “We have to allow the setting up of polling booths in such places, as not all of them are entitled to postal voting, and at the same time, they have to be on duty, including on election days,” he added.