Prague, Sept 6 (CTK) – The Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Czech parliament, again passed an amendment to introduce election spending limits for political parties and movements, including changes proposed by the Senate, on Tuesday.
The changes include more precise rules of support for parties by citizens, who do not run in elections, associations and firms.
The amendment is yet to be signed by President Milos Zeman into law.
The Senate’s changes are to prevent campaign costs of “third persons” from being calculated in the limits of the running parties and movements without their knowledge.
The government coalition of the Social Democrats (CSSD), ANO and Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) were arguing with the opposition about the bill for an hour. The opposition MPs expressed doubts whether the new rules would be really efficient in practice.
Opposition right-wing Civic Democrat (ODS) MP Marek Benda said it was not obvious from the draft legislation whether an additional payment of debts for a presidential candidate’s campaign could be calculated in the limits, which had occurred in the case of unsuccessful candidate Jan Fischer, former PM.
According to the amendment, a political party will not be allowed to spend more than 90 million crowns on the campaign before the general election due in 2017.
As for regional elections, the amendment set the spending limits for a party at seven million crowns per region. A candidate for senator should not invest in the campaign more than 2.5 million crowns. The 50-million-crown limit for a presidential candidate remains unchanged.
According to the amendment, parties will be obliged to have transparent election bank accounts and their funding will be supervised by a new body, the Office for supervision of the financing of political parties and movements.
