Eduardo Escobar of Citizen Action.
A report released on Friday 10 March by the Association for Civic Action (AC), Evolution of El Salvadoran Political Party Expenditures 2014-2020, shows that Salvadoran political institutions are misrecording expenses. increase. cost.
Information provided by 12 of the 13 political parties found that more than $139.5 million was spent on various government and campaign campaigns from 2014 to 2020.
“And parties are not inclined to specify what these administrative costs mean, they are laid out only in a general way. More specific, few parties point out specific expense items.” said Denis Siriezar, coordinator of the AC’s Center for Political Observation.
Generally, the purposes of the expenses were party propaganda and development, administrative expenses, campaign expenses, political investments, organizational expenses, administrative and operating expenses.
The Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (Gana) party is one of the parties reflecting significantly higher administrative costs at $12,684,214 out of $13,783,447 reported during the survey period. This is because it has not been decoupled from campaign spending, which was $7,704,184, the highest amount for the 2019 election.
Details of items, including administrative expenses, are unknown as the parties did not provide attachments to their financial statements, according to the report. Neither did the 2014 data.
“In addition to the fact that political party accounting is not standardized, they are very discretionary in accounting for expenses. is,” said Siliézar.
He added that administrative expenses should be separated from special expenses in election years.
“All these kinds of situations could undoubtedly reflect the oversight work of the Supreme Electoral Court, and perhaps the electoral authorities should allow the parties to correct these kinds of deficiencies and give them better control.” You can have a standardized account that works,” he emphasized.
“Each party accounts for and records its costs separately, making it difficult to perform analysis of party costs. The parties are accounted for according to their standards Eduardo Escobar, Executive Director of AC.
For Acción Ciudadana, the lack of clarity and lack of information regarding the costs of the parties may affect proper oversight and accountability.
One proposal, therefore, is for the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) to develop a unified catalog of accounts to avoid mis-accounting and allow more accurate comparisons to be made across political parties. is.
It also proposes the creation of a political party oversight unit within the TSE to verify financial information and sanctions violations related to political party transparency.
Destination of spending
For the Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Arena) party, spending from 2014 to 2020 was $79,834,885, with promotion and party development spending the most during this period at $35,251,611. while 19% were for advertising.
Expenditures from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) were $29,805,856, excluding financial statements for 2019 and 2020, of which 73% was for sectoral investments, campaigns, programs and projects, and various Investment in activities.
With respect to Nuevas Ideas, the report indicates that it did not provide information to the entity in its financial statements, so from monitoring advertising for the 2021 local and parliamentary elections, to advertising broadcast on radio, television and in print. Retrieves data about calculations. , Billboard, social media, totaling $10,490,537.
Another finding of the report is that not all parties detailed their spending by sector. This makes it difficult to know the level of investment made at the territorial level.
Source: Diario Elmundo
