“The practice to stimulate particular processes by rather strict regulations, used in Moldova and Europe in general, is good, on the one hand, because it brings clarity and this is necessary in our country. On the other hand, experience shows that the stricter the system is, the more inventive the participants in this system are,” vice director of the National Democratic Institute Andrei Rusanovschi said in an electoral discussion entitled “Increasing the role of civil society in the electoral process. Public debate on the draft regulations concerning political party funding” that was staged by the Central Election Commission in partnership with “Promo-LEX” Association, IPN reports.
The expert considers it is necessary to explain why the party must be funded with money from the state budget because the people do not understand this. “Without political parties, democracy cannot exist, while funding from the budget means transparency and offering of content to the political organizations, which are now rather formal and lack content,” stated Andrei Rusanovschi.
The Law on Party and Campaign Funding takes fully effect on January 1, 2016. It provides that the parties will be financed by the state. “The procedure should be thus regulated. By the given law, Parliament ruled that the Central Election Commission must approve regulations concerning the distribution of funding during election campaigns and in the period between elections,” said the Commission’s president Iurie Ciocan.
The debates involved representatives of parties and civil society. “Until now we didn’t have such regulations. There were no procedures for the political parties to regularly present reports,” stated Ciocan.
The regulations provide that the political parties can be funded from dues, donations and state budget subsidies and can earn money from own activities. No other sources of financing are allowed. A party cannot accept dues and donations higher than 0.3% of the incomes transferred from the state budget for a particular year and can use this money only after it is registered. Anonymous dues are banned. Private individuals and legal entities can make donations to a party equal to at most 200 and, respectively, 400 averagely official salaries.
