Transparency Serbia asked the Anti-Corruption Agency to look into certain illogicalities of the reports on the funding of the last parliamentary election campaigns.
The reports state that the total costs of the election campaign are significantly lower than the amounts spent under the segment “Revenues”. In addition, significant amounts have been omitted in the sum of some cost categories, such as television advertising costs (which otherwise represents the majority of costs).
Thus, for example, the cost report for the “Aleksandar Vučić – Za nasu decu” (Aleksandar Vucic – For Our Children) electoral list, states that the total costs of the election campaign are around 181 million, and the costs of TV advertising around 15.5 million, which is how much the total cost of advertising only on the B92 TV station is.
The report also states that the total cost of broadcasting various videos and advertisements is more than 350 million, but this amount is not included in the final calculation of television advertising costs.
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An individual cost, marked under “1.2.1 Item 1 – Advertising Services – Political Marketing” is higher than the sum and amounts to just over 186 million.
Under the item “Revenues”, on the other hand, SNS states that all 460 million spent was obtained from public sources and about 220 million from its own funds.
The similar claims are noticed in the cost overview of the Socialist Party of Serbia – Jedinstvena Srbije (SPS-JS) election campaign. The total costs are stated as 62 million, although the individual costs for broadcasting video and advertising materials are listed as a much higher amount, over 150 million, and the sum of television advertising costs is estimated at around three million.
The item “Revenues” shows that 85 million was spent from public sources, 8.8 million from donations and 3.6 million from their own sources.
(Danas, 28.08.2020)
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