CANDIDATES in May’s parliamentary elections will have a ceiling of €30,000 to spend on their campaigns and could be asked to stand down from their post if they declare false information, according to amendments being discussed at the House Interior Committee.
The Committee yesterday discussed the proposed changes, as well as a law proposal by ruling AKEL and opposition DISY to amend regulations surrounding voting centres abroad.
Proposals from the opposition and the Green Party on how to enforce better supervision over the amounts candidates spend were also examined.
With the new bill, the fee for a candidate to register will be increased from CY£250 (€427) to €500. It also provides an increase in the amount a candidate MP can spend on his or her election campaign, from CY£850 (€1,452) to €30,000, €5,000 by the candidates personally and €25,000 by the party they represent.
“This is good, as it was obvious that CY£850 wasn’t enough and the majority of candidates exceeded this amount,” said DISY’s Ionas Nicolaou after the meeting. “Thirty thousand euros as a total amount is sufficient, no one can say it is not enough or excessive.”
But he added that this measure would only suffice if there was effective supervision over the amounts spent by candidates; which was why his party submitted a proposal for the candidates’ declarations to be publicised the day after the elections.
“So if a candidate is aware that another candidate exceeded the €30,000 and lied in his or her declarations, the candidate can take the matter to court and even request for his election to be declared void,” Nicolaou explained, adding that this would discourage candidates from exceeding the legal amount. It would also prevent some candidates from covering the island’s billboards with expensive ads, he reasoned.
“There will be gaps and insufficiencies, but it can work. We need to start somewhere,” said Nicolaou.
However, MPs have not yet reached agreement on the fines and punishments that will be imposed if these amounts are violated.
“More control over the funds spent by parties and candidates is a must,” said the Green Party’s George Perdikes. “After a lot of deliberation in 2009 (prior to the European Parliament elections) we concluded that we couldn’t find a way to check on how the funds are spent due to lack of time and we urgently passed the bill for the euro elections. It is not possible to make the same mistake again this time around; we had two years ahead of us to resolve this problem.”
The Committee also looked into DISY and AKEL’s proposal to alter the regulations surrounding voting centres abroad. According to the current law, for a voting centre to be set up, at least 50 voters from each of the electoral districts – Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaca, Paphos, Famagusta and Kyrenia – needed to register. The proposal suggests that this number is reduced to 30. DISY has included a provision that if there aren’t enough voters from, say, Kyrenia – which is normally the case – for the centre to still go ahead but only for voters from the remaining districts. However, AKEL is concerned that this could mean a number of Kyrenians will be prevented from their right to vote, thus leading to discriminatory treatment.
“Our experience with the EP elections showed that if we keep it at 50 registered voters from every district, we will cover 58 per cent of voters abroad, while if we reduce it to 30, we will add another 29.6 per cent – this means we will cover almost 88 per cent of our voters abroad,” explained Committee Chairman, AKEL’s Yiannos Lamaris.
He added that there were still a few points of dispute and matters that needed to be clarified, before the bill – and proposals – were concluded on.
His Committee is awaiting the advice of the Legal Services on any injustices that may be created, said Lamaris.
He referred to other amendments and proposals, such as transferring the votes from one centre to another, if there are fewer than 20 voting slips – “to ensure confidentiality” – and a suggestion to increase the number of voters by registering all Greek Cypriot citizens automatically by using the population register.
The Committee Chairman was also sceptical over the suggestion to threaten MPs with losing their post if it emerges they spent more on their elections than they declared. “I don’t think police measures will resolve this problem,” Lamaris pointed out.
DIKO’s Angelos Votsis said his party’s main concern was ensuring the secrecy of the vote. But he wondered how it would be possible to merge the votes from two centres – as far apart, for example, as Crete and Macedonia – in time for the final count.
