Free and fair elections is one of
the main elements of a democratic country, because it is the moment, when the
society can put into effect its role of supervisor, evaluating activities of
politicians, their programs and promises. As a row of international and as well
as experiences of Latvia testify, one of the determinants for success in the
elections is wide publicity in mass media and effective political advertising,
for the placement of which political parties need significant financial
resources. To run fair elections, it is necessary that all the parties have
equal laws of the game, otherwise there can arise situations that in the
elections the determinant is the wealth of the political party, not the
viewpoints or evaluation of the previous activities of the parties, because
with a huge amount of advertising they can dominate in the public sphere and
influence the choice of the voters. To obtain such resources, parties should
acquire their supporters and potential donors. Experts of party financing point
out that – the more diverse are sources of party finances, the smaller risk
that the parties become dependent from some particular interests. The former
experience of Latvia shows that parties live off from few persons` big amount donations,
therefore it elevates the risk that relationship of dependence develops between
parties and donors, and parties become “pocket organizations” of some wealthy
people, who can get selfish benefit via parties. The illegal or against public
interests oriented financing system of the political parties, as one of the
main ares of political corruption in Latvia, was pointed out in the World Bank
report, published in year 2000, about the corruption in countries in transition
period. The results of the report stimulated that a work on elaboration of a
law on financing of political parties was started, in this process TI Latvia
- Delna participated actively. Therefore the work to reduce the political
corruption has become as one of the priorities of TI Latvia - Delna`sactivities. TI Latvia - Delna has actively worked to counter the spread
of political corruption, putting forward legislation initiatives, actively
working with promoting the transparency of political party activities, as well
as monitoring the work of parties, especially in pre-election period to pay
society's attention to cases, where parties are breaking the regulation of
party financing and inviting the society critically evaluate the activities of
parties. Monitoring of election campaigns helps to discover the imperfections
in the legislation, in prevention of which active work is taking place in the
period between elections, therefore the work of TI Latvia - Delna with
these issues is continuing to keep improving the party financing system.
TI Latvia – Delna has been working on
following projects:
- “How democratic are
political parties of Latvia– procedure and criteria of nomination of election candidates in the municipal
elections of 2009 in Riga and Jurmala” (project financially
supported by “Soros Foundation – Latvia”)
- “Monitoring of
administrative recourse usage before municipal elections of year 2005”,
year
- “Monitoring of
administrative recourse usage before parliamentary elections of year 2006”
- “Frankly about
finances of election campaign before the 8th Saeima (parliament)
elections (year 2001)” (project financially supported by“Soros Foundation – Latvia”)
- “Transparency in party
financing (year 2001)” (project financially supported by“Soros Foundation – Latvia”)
