Cabinet to kill campaign spending limit.

(From The Slovak Spectator)

Byline: Martina Pisarova Spectator staff

Effective control for party financing is essential to keep campaigns transparent, NGOs say TRANSPARENCY watchdog organisations have warned of the danger in the planned elimination of a Sk12 million ([euro]290,000) spending limit on parties' election campaigns. They argue that doing so before new rules of control are put in place would create a vacuum. The cabinet agreed to abolish the law at its meeting on August 27, dubbing the existing legislation ineffective due to the virtually non-existent control mechanisms. The law, originally approved in 1994, was intended to create equal campaign conditions for all political parties, regardless of their size, and to ensure that wealthy parties do not enjoy a major advantage in election races. "Practical life has shown that the control of the promotional pre-election spending of political movements and parties has been minimally effective," the Finance Ministry stated in its explanation for why the limit is unnecessary. Even some opposition MPs have agreed with the elimination of the limit. Jan Kovareik, deputy chairman of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), said to The Slovak Spectator that "except for HZDS and some smaller parliamentary parties, I think that all the others transgressed the limit during the last elections. Thus it would be reasonable to cancel the limit because it has hardly ever been respected anyway." The law has indeed proven ineffective: for nearly ten years now, as three parliamentary elections have passed, only one party has officially gone beyond the legal limit. The ruling coalition party, the New Citizen's Alliance (ANO), admitted in a regular report to the Finance Ministry that its 2002 election campaign cost Sk12.9 million ([euro]310,000). But thousands of mega-billboards, plastered around Slovakia before the elections, promoted parties such as the ruling Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKU), or the opposition Smer party. This led many observers to suspect that ...