The Partners for Transparency Foundation (PFT) issued its first report to assess electoral financing and spending for the electoral districts targeted for the second phase of the parliamentary elections, which deals with a quantitative analysis of the results of field monitoring carried out by the “Our Voices Against Your Money” initiative team in three governorates: Port Said, Cairo, and Dakahlia. ", In the departments of East Port Said, Bandar Al-Mansoura in Dakahlia and the Maadi district in Cairo.

The report dealt with a number of violations that were detected during the electoral campaigning period, the most prominent of which was the exploitation of government facilities in advertising, as well as cases of financial and in-kind bribes. The report also included a quantitative analysis of the performance of the majority of candidates with regard to financing and electoral spending.

The report revealed the continuation of a number of negative practices that were observed during the first phase, the most prominent of which is the absence of the element of transparency and disclosure among the overwhelming majority of the candidates, as all candidates - with rare exceptions - were not interested in announcing the size of their electoral spending or the sources of financing their electoral campaign, despite this. The inherent right of the voter.

As for the sources of financing electoral campaigns, the results showed 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 light of lack of opportunities to obtain support through political parties or legal donations.

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 Mansoura 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 until 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.