With the approaching date of the election race for the House of Representatives, the most important event in Egyptian parliamentary life, candidates struggle to announce their electoral platform through propaganda campaigns that are usually marred by legal violations.
The phenomenon of political money comes on top of these irregularities, which have coincided with the electoral campaigns since the last decade of the last century, and despite the state's tireless efforts to eliminate these violations by enacting legislation that prohibits them, and the activity of the role of civil society institutions in monitoring and analyzing aspects of the problem to ensure a great deal of The integrity and transparency of the electoral process and the provision of more neutral opportunities for the candidates, however, all these attempts are quickly shattered in front of the hegemony of political money, which has made a number of civil society institutions resort to a new method to monitor electoral spending for the latest entitlement from the roadmap, by merging financial analysts to monitor the entire process. .
To impose sanctions
In this context, human rights lawyer Salah Suleiman, head of the Al-Naqib Foundation for Training and Democracy Support, praised the initiative launched by the "Partners for Transparency" and a number of civil society organizations to monitor the financial spending of campaigning in the streets.
Suleiman indicated that the success of the aforementioned campaign depends on the issuance of a package of decisions by the Supreme Committee that supervises the electoral process, by imposing penalties on violators that vary between a fine and a complete cancellation from the lists of candidates.
New initiative
From his side, human rights lawyer Ayman Aqil, chairman of the board of trustees of the Maat Foundation for Peace and Development, said that the financial spending control initiative concerned with uncovering financial irregularities in the election campaign in the House of Representatives elections is "new and good." He added: "We will study the results that will be circulated later. ».
Aqeel added that the decision to integrate financial analysts is necessary for the success of the experiment, calling on the Supreme Committee that supervises the elections to impose sanctions on the dissenting candidates as a basic measure in addition to the measures it has recently taken to allocate an official committee to follow up financial spending, and to commit each candidate to open a bank account.
Aqeel called on civil society institutions and political parties to play their primary role in educating the Egyptian street about the legislative and oversight duties of the parliament deputy, separating them from the tasks entrusted to the local deputy, and the criteria for selecting the appropriate and best candidate according to his electoral program.
Respect for candidates
Musa Mustafa Musa, head of the Al-Ghad Party, expressed his dissatisfaction with the number of emerging civil society institutions that are entering the process of monitoring the upcoming parliamentary elections, saying: “We are committed to the decisions issued by the Supreme Committee supervising the elections in terms of monitoring the financial expenditures of electoral campaigning for the next Parliament candidates. Only, and the organizations monitoring the electoral process as a whole must be carefully selected according to the criteria of competence and experience.
In special statements to the "veto", he called on civil society institutions to monitor financial spending, to respect candidates even if they were found to have any financial wrongdoing, especially since most of them come from ancient families, rejecting at the same time any punishment that could be imposed on the violating candidates.
It is noteworthy that Dr. Walaa Abdel Karim, Director of Partners for Transparency, announced earlier the launch of an initiative to monitor financial expenditures for electoral propaganda for the next parliament’s candidates under the slogan “Our Voices Against Your Money”, targeting 5 governorates (Cairo, Alexandria, Dakahlia, Port Said and Fayoum) The initiative will include about 20 individuals divided between an observer financial analyst, as well as 40 volunteers to collect the necessary information to uncover electoral irregularities.
