I wrote Aya Nabil
Partners for Transparency Foundation revealed in its first report to monitor financial spending in the parliamentary elections that a number of negative practices that were monitored during the first phase continued, most notably the absence of the transparency and disclosure component of the overwhelming majority of the candidates, as all candidates - with rare exceptions - did not care to advertise. The size of their electoral spending or the sources of financing their election campaign, although this is the inherent right of the voter. The report, issued a short while ago, assessed the electoral funding and spending of the electoral districts targeted in the second phase of the Egyptian parliamentary elections, and dealt with a quantitative analysis of the results of field monitoring carried out by the “Our Voices Against Your Money” initiative team in three electoral districts in the governorates of Port Said, Cairo, and Dakahlia, which are East Port Said districts. Bandar Al-Mansoura in Dakahlia, and the Maadi district in Cairo. The Foundation followed up the violations that were detected during the electoral campaigning period, the most prominent of which is the exploitation of government facilities in advertising, as well as cases of providing financial and in-kind bribes. The report also included a quantitative analysis of the performance of the majority of candidates with regard to funding and electoral spending. With regard to the sources of financing electoral campaigns, the report clarified that personal resources were the main source for the vast majority of candidates, which indicates that the rich were the most candidates, while the opportunities for the poor who did not have financial resources to enable them to spend on their election campaigns decreased, especially in The lack of access to party support or legal donations remained. The results also revealed that the candidates for the East Department in Port Said were the most responsive to the monitoring team, while the candidates for the Maadi Department in Cairo and Mansourah in Dakahlia were the least responsive, and the majority of them refused to make statements to the monitoring team. Partners for Transparency PFT has started implementing its initiative to monitor electoral financing and spending in a number of electoral districts, titled “Our Voices Against Your Money”, from September 2015 to December 2015 with the aim of contributing to the development of mechanisms to monitor, control and regulate the use of money in The electoral process.
