Chair of campaign finance working group doubts effectiveness of punishment

print this

An election funding working group convenes for the first time on Tuesday to ponder ways of improving the current legislation on the disclosure of sources of election funding. Lauri Tarasti, the chairman of the working group feels that the biggest change has already happened:
     “The political culture has changed thoroughly. There is no going back to what came before”, Tarasti said to Helsingin Sanomat. “Political responsibility has worked. The government has been shaken and money has been returned.”
     
Tarasti opposes assigning punishments for incomplete disclosures. He supports at most a conditional fine for candidates who would otherwise not make a complete campaign spending disclosure. He is in favour of imposing a fine on those who fail to submit a disclosure.
      Tarasti also feels that openness is better than a legal limit on individual donations.
      Spending on election campaigns needs to be itemised. Organising enforcement is a great challenge.
     The task force is expected to complete its proposal by the end of the year. The aim is to have the new legislation in force by next summer’s elections for the European Parliament.
     
The change in the political culture is seen as the most important event by Tarasti.
     Tarasti headed the previous working group that dealt with the same matters. He expected the law on election campaign financing to change candidates’ behaviour already in the elections of 2003, but was disappointed.
     He opposes assigning punishments for incomplete disclosures. “If we had set punishments the last time around, most of the election financing would have been left unreported.”
     Nevertheless, he feels that a conditional fine for failure to revise an election funding disclosure could work.
     “If it is EUR 5,000 the first time and another EUR 5,000 a second time, it would have an effect. The good thing about a conditional fine is that it is initiated at the administrative level, and not by a political rival”, Tarasti says.
     The election campaign funding disclosures are collected by the Ministry of Justice, which puts the information online. Tarasti ponders the implications for mandatory disclosure with respect to the municipal elections this autumn.
     “There are 35,000 candidates in the municipal elections, of whom maybe 15,000 members will be chosen, along with their alternates. We do not have the kind of police state that would make it possible to monitor them.”
     
Tarasti does not think that the present law is a bad one. It is to be fixed by the municipal elections in such a way that individual donations of EUR 1,000 or more will have to be reported, and spending itemised.
     “I am amazed at why politicians had to keep their support a secret. The political culture so far has been that matters are not discussed.”
     Tarasti feels that fund-raising campaigns, art sales, and seminars do not constitute bribery as such, and that politics needs financial support.
     “How is one to define, what is campaigning for a candidate, and what is campaigning for a party. If Lääkärilehti (the journal of the Finnish Medical Association) publishes and advertisement declaring that these are our candidates, is it electioneering? Election campaigning takes place in society all the time.”
     “If political credibility has suffered, that of the media has suffered as well. Exaggeration always eats away at credibility.”


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Opposition received no new information from PM on campaign funding links with KMS (13.6.2008)
  Further evidence of close ties between Centre Party and election campaign finance organisation (4.6.2008)
  Prime Minister warns of political crisis stemming from election campaign money affair (21.5.2008)

Helsingin Sanomat