54. Must reports from political parties and/or candidates include information on itemized spending?

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).

IX. CAMPAIGN FINANCE

According to the CEC, all three candidates submitted financial reports to the CEC within five days of the announcement of election results, meeting the legal deadline. While the campaign fund of President Nazarbayev was larger than that of the other candidates, none of the candidates reached the contribution or spending limits. No breaches of campaign rules were identified by the CEC. Article 34.4 of the Election Law requires the CEC to publish in the mass media information about the amount and sources of funding of each candidate within ten days of the announcement of election results. OSCE/ODIHR EOM media monitoring indicated that the information was not made readily available in media by this deadline. Once the information was posted on the CEC website it did not provide detailed information on the amount and source of campaign contributions or the amount and purpose of campaign expenditures. To enhance transparency, the Election Law could be amended to provide that detailed financial reports are made publicly available and posted on the CEC website.

(OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission Final Report, Republic of Kazakhstan, Early Presidential Election, 26 April 2015, available at http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/kazakhstan/174811?download=true accessed January 2018).