FijiFirst way ahead in campaign financing by donations

Despite widespread fundraising locally and abroad by the Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) hierarchy, only $74,881 has been entered as income from fundraising in the party's books for the year ending 31 December 2017.

The audited accounts of all political parties were published as paid advertisements by the Fijian Elections Office as required by law in yesterday's Fiji Sun.

A large chunk of cash SODELPA received last year was from a Government grant. The party received $367,742 from the Government. An expenditure noted as "A Team"

amounting to $44,693 was shown in their books. Apart from parliamentarians' advocacy allowance of $63,309 last year, the largest chunk of money was spent by the "A Team". $11,336 was used by the party leader.

Money that went into SODELPA's coffers were from soli amounting to $150,058, showing that it raises more money from traditional contributions. SODELPA received only $4193 in donations last year. National Federation Party had $18,982 as cash on hand as at 31 December 2017.

Fiji's oldest political party was better than SODELPA in terms of receiving donations.

It noted $125,086 as donations. More people are putting their money where their mouth is and this is evident from the large number of people opting to donate to FijiFirst.

Last year, FijiFirst received more than $1.5 million in donations, a significant amount compared with the paltry sum all other political parties received. The large amount is an indication of more people supporting FijiFirst and putting in their hardearned money to back the ruling political party.

The Fiji United Freedom Party has $250 to its name while the Peoples Democratic Party had a cash balance of $3691 end of last year.

Unity Fiji has net assets of $3568 and have had not much luck in raising funds through donations. Fiji Labour Party too has not had much success in raising funds and are left with $769 to its name according to their its accounts.