prijava
SARAJEVO, February 5 (FENA) - Fifteen leading political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina have reported 4.5 million KM in advertising costs in their post-election reports for the last local elections. However, only the costs of media and outdoor advertising (via billboards) recorded by Transparency International in BiH (TI BiH) during the last campaign exceed this amount by at least 1.8 million KM which clearly shows that the political parties did not realistically present information on their funding.
TI BiH recorded the costs of advertising via billboards, for which the parties spent an estimated 3.58 million KM, in only 70 out of a total of 142 local communities, and the costs of online and other forms of advertising for which were not even listed, which clearly shows that the amount that the parties actually spent on their advertising is far much higher, Transparency International in BiH underlined.
On the other hand, data on media advertising collected by the media monitoring agency for the needs of TI BiH show that 15 political parties spent at least 2.79 million KM on the production and advertisements in the media.
For years, TI BiH has been pointing out the shortcomings of the Law on Financing of Political Parties, which allows parties to bypass the reporting of all revenues and expenditures, as shown by the latest post-election financial reports of parties published by the CEC BiH.
For example, the SNSD in its reports presented the total costs of advertising to be 845 thousand KM, although according to the estimate of TI BiH, only billboards and media advertising of this party were worth 1.4 million KM. It also sounds absurd that this party reported only 935 KM as the cost of holding election rallies, although before and during the campaign they had dozens of smaller and larger rallies where they had a sound system installed, stage, food, drinks and all other facilities whose price does not come even close to the reported amount.
On the other hand, this political party stated in the report that it has not received a single KM in donations from private companies and that its costs are mostly covered by revenues from the budget and membership fees, said TI BiH.
(FENA) S. R.
