Reports beyond public still

Parties’ Poll Expenses
Reports beyond public still
The Election Commission (EC) has not yet disclosed polls expenditure reports submitted to it by the political parties and candidates who contested the last parliamentary election although electoral laws make the disclosure mandatory to ensure people’s access to those.
Representation of the People Order (RPO) provides that copies of polls expenditure of the parties and candidates shall be put on the EC’s website, and also kept open for public view.
Most of the contestants in the December 29 general election submitted their expenditure reports by January 31, within 30 days of publication of election results in the official gazette on January 1, EC officials said.
Similarly, most of the 38 registered political parties which participated in the polls submitted expenditure reports by March 31, and the others did so by April 30.
But the EC is yet to initiate steps to put those on its website.
Sources pointed out that there is no time limit for the EC to do this.
Against this backdrop, EC officials refused to give journalists access to the expenditure reports.
A total of 1,554 candidates contested the ninth parliamentary polls.
The EC Secretariat is yet to prepare any report on how many contestants failed to submit election expenditure reports within specified timeframe.
Contacted, Election Commissioner Muhammed Sohul Hussain said yesterday, “We will sit to decide whether the documents (expenditure reports) will be put on our website as it is or we will first examine and then get those published.”
A number of EC officials concerned said there are inconsistencies in the reports of most of the political parties.
In the wake of EC’s proposal, the immediate past caretaker government introduced the provision for getting all the documents concerned on the EC’s website allowing people to see those.
Meanwhile, the EC had quickly put on its website all documents with the affidavits submitted by contestants in the last polls, giving people access to their particulars before the election.
The EC had earlier announced that it would get the expenditure reports audited by chartered accountants. But EC officials said there has been no progress in this regard.
In the past, successive ECs did not disclose expenditure reports submitted by candidates since there was no specific law for it. And the ECs did not also examine whether those were correct or not, and took no action for submission of false reports or non-submission of reports.
The present EC headed by ATM Shamsul Huda has repeatedly said they would not follow the past ECs.

Courtesy of The Daily Star