Finance Ministry: United Serbia Gets 493.6 Million Dinars
The Finance Ministry says each seat won in the October 25 election is worth 4,792,041.88 dinars. The remaining campaign money is paid only after the election commission's report.
The Finance Ministry says that each seat won in the October 25 parliamentary election is worth 4,792,041.88 dinars from the budget. The ministry gave the figure in reply to questions from the daily Politika, and from it the paper calculates that the Aleksandar Vucic - United Serbia list is owed 493,580,313.64 dinars for its 103 seats, about 4.2 million euros at 118 dinars to the euro.
How much money does each seat bring?
The same calculation for the Student List, which Politika credits with 141 seats, gives 675,677,905.08 dinars, or about 5.7 million euros. The remaining six seats belong to minority lists, and Politika reports that three or four such lists will receive payments.
In total, 1,475,810,000 dinars, about 12.5 million euros, was set aside from the budget reserve to finance the campaign. The same amount has to be secured before the end of the year for the presidential election.
The Finance Ministry also explained in its reply how the money is divided:
“The amount due for each seat won is 4,792,041.88 dinars. The rest of the funds earmarked for financing the costs of the election campaign will be paid out within five days after the Republic Election Commission (RIK) publishes its overall report on the election results.”
The payout of the remainder, then, waits for the commission’s report on the overall results. Politika’s own article refers to preliminary results.
Who received money before the election?
Under the law, 40 percent of the total sum is split in equal parts among the election participants before the vote. This time that came to 34,724,941 dinars each, about 294,000 euros. The Finance Ministry added:
“After the consolidated electoral list was published, and once the conditions required by law were met, ten electoral lists received funds from the budget of the Republic of Serbia to finance the costs of the election campaign.”
According to preliminary campaign cost reports, the lists that entered the race without that money were those of Ivica Dacic and Usame Zukorlic, the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, the Albanian Coalition and four smaller lists.
Who has to give the money back?
The Law on Financing Political Activities requires lists that fail to win at least one percent of valid votes, or 0.2 percent for minority lists, to return the funds they received within 30 days of the final report on the results being declared. Citing preliminary results, Politika reports that the money should be returned by Authentic Right, European Serbia, the Movement of Forces of Serbia and several other lists. The organization Transparency Serbia has pointed out on several occasions that collection is not guaranteed from entities that have no assets and did not post an election guarantee.
What was reported as campaign spending?
Preliminary cost reports, covering the period up to October 18, were submitted by 16 of the 18 electoral lists. They declared costs of about 1.038 billion dinars, roughly 8.9 million euros. Parliamentary parties reported using a total of 615 million dinars from their regular operating funds, of which the United Serbia list declared 450 million and the list of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) 119.5 million dinars.
Transparency Serbia claims that the Aleksandar Vucic - United Serbia list declared television advertising costs only on some of the stations where its monitoring recorded the list advertising, and that the list of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), according to data the organization has gathered, has already exceeded the permitted amount of spending. The legal limit is six million euros. That is Transparency Serbia’s claim; no response from United Serbia or the SNS had been published by the time of this article.
The organization also says the Student List declared 26,408 individual contributions from citizens worth a total of 231 million dinars, and the Russian Party declared 188 million dinars for the cost of materials.
The Anti-Corruption Agency oversees campaign financing. Parties file their final cost reports with it within 30 days of the publication of the overall report on the election results, and the Agency publishes them on its website within five days of receiving a properly submitted report.
