Observers slam political parties on funding transparency
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Observer Mission says Monday’s regional and general elections in Guyana took place in a “deeply polarised environment” and bemoaned a lack of transparency in the administration of the polls.
Head of the observer mission, Urmas Paet, told a news conference Wednesday that the two major political parties had been less than open about the financiers of their campaigns.
Delivering the team’s preliminary report on the elections, Paet charged that the legal framework did not provide for accountability in campaign financing.
“Parties and candidates raise funds from private sources in country and abroad, without any limitations regarding the sources or amount of donation, and with limited obligations to disclose sources of funding or report on expenditure,” Paet said.
““There are a few sentences in the legislation, but I’m not sure that they are followed, so that basically nobody knows who finances election campaigns, what is the reason why they finance these electoral campaigns, and also what would be a politically possible outcome of this kind of financing of politics and finances of political campaigns.”
Paet told reporters that the campaign demonstrated that both the coalition, A Partnership for National Unity (and the Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) and the main opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) had significant funds at their disposal “unmatched by any other party”.
He also said that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) did not “assume its oversight responsibility to monitor campaign finance”.
But the EU official also acknowledged that the elections were competitive and that contestants could campaign freely.
The EU observers assessed the process positively although they cited that some procedural safeguards were not consistently applied.
“Counting was conducted in a transparent manner, but reconciliation procedures were not always followed. In the absence of clear, written instructions, the mission noted inconsistencies in the results transmission and tabulation process,” the EU said in its preliminary findings.