53. Must reports from political parties and/or candidates include information on itemized income?

IX. CAMPAIGN FINANCE

The bank reports to the CEC on a weekly basis on account activities. In a welcome development, following August 2015 amendments to a CEC resolution, the CEC is now obliged to publish campaign finance overviews twice a month in the campaign period. For these elections, the CEC published two overviews on 3 and 16 March.  However, these only provided the total amounts received and spent per party. The lack of information on donors and how the funds were spent negativel impacted on voters’ ability to make an informed choice. In addition to bank reports to the CEC, political parties are required to submit a report on all campaign finances within five days of the announcement of election results. On the basis of these reports the CEC published an overview of the total amount received by each party and the sources of those funds.  The law is silent on the content or format of campaign finance reports and therefore there is no obligation on the CEC to fully disclose the sources of funding and detail the expenditures of the parties. This further limited the transparency of campaign finances. To enhance transparency, detailed and standardized campaign finance reports could be considered, including full data on the sources of funding and the expenditures. Such reports should be publicly available and posted on the CEC website.

(OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission Final Report, Republic of Kazakhstan, Early Parliamentary Elections 20 March 2016, available at http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/kazakhstan/248781?download=true accessed January 2018).