Transparency International, Freedom House and the Károly Eötvös Research Institute will publish their estimates of political parties’ expenses during the election campaign.
Noémi Alexa, head of Transparency’s Hungarian office, said the NGOs want to demonstrate that the current law cannot be observed, as it is unrealistic.
Parliamentary parties spent nearly Ft 7.6 billion on their campaigns in 2006 although the law maximises the spending at Ft 400 million per party.
The NGOs will publish their cost estimates on the website kepmutatas.hu (képmutatás is Hungarian for “hypocrisy”).
Transparency International and Freedom House drafted a bill on changing campaign financing rules, but it did not receive support from all parties.
“The state of party and campaign financing in Hungary and the position of all parliamentary parties on the issue today is nothing if not hypocritical,” the website declares.
It continues: “While parties profess their desire to clean up the current system and eliminate the corrupt practices surrounding it, they continue to spend as much as ten times the legal limit on their campaigns, abuse state and municipal resources for their campaigns, raise funds through illegal channels and spend money in ways that are incompatible with the word, as well as the spirit, of the law.”
