Most parties oppose tougher rules on disclosing campaign financing
SDP spent EUR 300,000 more on election campaign than originally intended
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Most Parliamentary parties are taking a less than enthusiastic view of calls for tougher requirements for disclosing large contributions to their election campaigns.
Parties and their parliamentary groups have advised Members of Parliament to fill out their notices honestly, and as the law requires. The law itself is considered adequate.
Only the Greens are calling for more thorough disclosure. The party has decided on its own behalf that if asked, it will disclose all contributions of more than EUR 1,000.
Under existing legislation, those who are elected to Parliament and to municipal councils, and those in line to succeed the elected MPs and municipal council members as alternates, are required to give an accounting of all contributions of more than EUR 1,700.
The law is not actively enforced: it is basically up to the individual elected official to disclose major campaign contributions.
Criticism of the system intensified when it was revealed that Minister of Justice Leena Luhtanen (SDP) had not disclosed a large contribution for a campaign advertisement.
This week Annika Lapintie, chairwoman of the Left Alliance Parliamentary Group made an initiative for more stringent disclosure requirements. The proposal calls for EUR 1,000 to be the threshold requiring disclosure. She also proposed that neglecting to disclose the information should carry a punishment.
Not even Aulis Ruuth, the party secretary of Lapintie’s own party, is in favour of such measures. "Election financing is not a problem in Finland", he says.
Agreeing with him are all party secretaries and party financial officers interviewed by Helsingin Sanomat.
"The present system has all possibilities to work. It would be sad if it would work only with the threat of punishment", said Annika Kokko, secretary of the Christian Democratic Party.
Before the elections Helsingin Sanomat asked four candidates to itemise their fund raising and campaign spending. The candidates had very different starting points.
Whereas Tapio Laakso, a student in Helsinki who ran as a Green candidate covered nearly half of his modest campaign budget with his student loan, Tampere shop steward Jari Heikkilä (Left Alliance) got nearly EUR 34,000 in contributions from various organisations.
Neither were elected.
Laakso, who chairs the Greens’ youth organisation, was a candidate for the first time, and got 739 votes. He is one of the better-known Finnish civic activists.
Heikkilä’s 2,518 votes put him in fourth place among Left Alliance candidates in the Pirkanmaa electoral district.
Of the candidates whose spending was examined by Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest spender was Tuija Nurmi (Nat. Coalition Party) who succeeded in getting into Parliament for the fourth time running. She financed 75 per cent of her campaign budget of more than EUR 45,000 from her own savings.
Nurmi got 6,749 votes in the Häme electoral district.
In her first Parliamentary election in 1995, Nurmi spent the equivalent of more than EUR 82,000 - most of it also came out of her own savings.
Money is not always the most important consideration. Merja Kuusisto (SDP), who chairs Tuusula Municipal Council, spent less than last time, but she was elected with 5,130 personal votes.
Under the present rules, MPs and their alternates are required to report large contributions to the Ministry of Justice within two months of the election. The first to do so was MP Heli Järvinen (Green) from South Savo.
Parties are not required to disclose where the money came from. The March Parliamentary elections were the most expensive ever, and the SDP, the National Coalition Party, and the Greens all spent more money on them than they had planned.
The SDP used EUR 300,000 more than it expected, and the National Coalition Party overspent its budget by EUR 100,000. Both parties say that they had managed to raise more funds than they had expected.
The Greens received a donation of EUR 75,000, which they used on advertising. The budgets of other parties were more or less what their planners had expected.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 2.4.2007 - TODAY |
 Most parties oppose tougher rules on disclosing campaign financing
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