A sum of 65 million lei was allocated for organizing and holding the local general elections of 2015. This sum was supplemented from the Government’s reserve fund with 15.8 million lei. The costs however totaled 71 million lei, says an Audit Office report on the audit of the use of the public funds by the Central Election Commission (CEC) and some of the district electoral councils, which was presented in a public meeting on February 16. According to the Audit Office, these discrepancies point to important shortcomings in the method of determining the costs for holding elections, IPN reports.
The report says these shortcomings refer first of all to the costs for purchasing different types of goods and services. The CEC does not have relevant quantitative norms. Electoral functionaries, who didn’t have a defined status, were remunerated by the CEC as ‘service provider’. But they were named to this post, not yet contracted freely on the market, as other service providers.
The Audit Office also identified faults in the remuneration of CEC members who do not work on a permanent basis, personnel of the electoral councils of the first and second levels and electoral bureaus and other staff. There were reported costs of 54.1 million lei or 76.2% of the total costs incurred.
Some costs, like those associated with the keeping of salaries of electoral functionaries who were suspended from the main job, weren’t included in the reports of the CEC. There was no correlation of the remuneration with the real work done by electoral functionaries.
According to the Audit Office, the remaining funds were returned by the CEC without serious violations.
