Partners For Transparency Issues its Preliminary Report for "Our Votes Against

Your Money" Initiative

Irregularities for majority of candidates: Lack of Audit and Absence of the
Campaign's Accountant are the most serious out of them
Cases for electoral bribes and using worship houses in Alexandria, and the
situation is better in Fayoum
Partners For Transparency (PFT) issued its first report to evaluate electoral funds and
spending in the target constituencies in the Egyptian parliamentary election's first stage,
presenting a quantitative analysis for the field observation results conducted by the "Our
Votes Against Your Money" initiative's team in two districts in Alexandria and
Fayoum: Moharam Baik district in Alexandria composing 36 candidates and Fayoum
city in Fayoum composing 27 candidates.
PFT inaugurated its initiative entitled "Our Votes Against Your Money" to observe
electoral funds and spending in some of the electoral constituencies since September
2015, where the initiative is planned to continue till the end of the second phase of the
parliamentary elections in December 2015.
The initiative seeks to reach general indicators on the nature of electoral funds and
spending in the Egyptian elections; establish for new tools can be developed and utilized
later on to assist civil society organizations , the national authority for elections, media
and parties to observe, control and regulate the use of money in the electoral process.
The report highlighted key observations relative to electoral funds and spending in
Moharam Baik and Fayoum districts as follows:
First observation; candidates in both observed districts did not adhere to
maintenance of accounts relative to their campaigns in regular records as
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stipulated by the Law on Exercising Political Rights, majority of candidates in

both districts conducted this violation opening the door for questioning the
accurate values for their campaigns;
Second observation; more visible in Moharam Baik, the lack of transparency and
disclosure for the different aspects of candidate's campaign, majority of
candidates either refused to declare the donations they receives or denied
receiving such donations; majority of candidates refrained from declaring their
bank account number, the accurate values to their campaigns expenses and their
funding resources to their electorate. Despite the Law on Exercising Political
Rights includes a clear gab, where it does not set regulations in this regards, still,
political harmonization and integrity and transparency rules required the
candidates to adhere to this declaration;
Third observation; on the practice of illegal campaigning, this observation was
visible in Moharam Baik district, where most of the candidates conducted
electoral campaigning outside the official timings, which is considered a flagrant
violation to the regulations stipulated in the Law on Exercising Political Rights;
Fourth observation; electoral bribes were observed on a limited scale in
Moharam Baik district in Alexandria, in Fayoum, no similar cases were
documented;
Fifth observation; neither non-governmental organizations nor governmental
institutions were used in electoral campaigning in both districts, while limited
cases for using the houses of worship in Moharam Baik district were observed;
Sixth observation; regarding the existence of a chartered accountant in the
candidate's campaigns, the observation results in both districts indicated that
majority of candidates' campaigns do not include chartered accountants as defined
by the Law on Exercising Political Rights, opening the door for indiscriminate
funding and spending along with the dilemma of preparing financial reports
afterwards, and affecting trust rates in the income and expenses relative to
candidates campaigns;
Seventh observation; concerning the differences between the two districts and
the nature of irregularities relative to electoral funds and spending, Fayoum
district was much better than Moharam Baik district, indicating that political
money was more present, and the violations relative to it were more visible in
Moharam Baik than in Fayoum, this might be attributed to the cultural, social and
economic context in both districts.

Read the complete report on: https://goo.gl/YStF0W

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