Draft law seeks to check corruption in election campaigns

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission will have sweeping powers to check runaway campaign spending in the General Election if new proposals are passed into law.

The commission has drafted a Bill which, if passed by Parliament, will commit political parties and candidates running for various positions to keep meticulous books or risk disqualification.

The commission will have the power to put an upper limit on how much candidates can spend on campaigns in a move designed to contain wealthy spendthrifts who literally buy their way to political power and edge out less-endowed candidates.

If the Bill is passed into law, those who break the rules could face jail terms of up to two years or fines of up to Sh1 million depending on the offence and the magnitude of the breach.

By the same token, those in charge of political parties will be deemed to have individually broken the law.

According to a study conducted by the Coalition for Accountable Political Financing, political parties and candidates collectively spent as much as Sh5.65 billion on the campaigns.

The study estimated that PNU, which was running incumbent whose candidate was incumbent President Kibaki, spent about Sh2.1 billion while Raila Odinga’s ODM spent Sh1.2 billion. ODM Kenya, whose candidate was Kalonzo Musyoka, spent an estimated Sh157 million.

The parties, the study found, raised their money through donations, personal contributions and nomination fees from their candidates.

Voter bribery

The report estimates that parliamentary candidates collectively spent about Sh1.4 billion, half of which was used to buy votes and bribe voters.

The study was funded by the United Nations Development Programme. It found that many parliamentary candidates financed their own campaigns, with most of their money coming from personal resources, donations from family and friends, pyramid schemes, and loans from saccos, banks, insurance companies and personal business funds.

For those in public office, additional resources came from unpaid use of the provincial administration machinery, coercion to extort money from private businesses and use of state media and state corporation advertisements to propagate partisan information.

Those in government were also found to use state premises for party meetings, involving senior public officers in presidential campaign planning.

They also used government resources to produce campaign materials and fuelled private vehicles using government funds. The Bill seek to do away with such practises by establishing spending limits and an accounting and auditing procedure.

Illegal sources

The Bill seeks to bar collection of campaign funds from organisations, foreigners, foreign states and anonymous or illegal sources. It also seeks to expressly prohibit the use of state resources for campaigning.

In setting the spending limits, the draft Bill proposes that the IEBC take into consideration the difference in the size, categories of candidates and population in the electoral constituency.

And, in what might be a reprieve for political parties and candidates, the law will allow them to conduct harambees to finance campaigns and election-related activities.

The law otherwise bars candidates from participating in harambees within eight months of an election.

The Bill proposes the establishment of a Campaign Finance Committee to be chaired by the IEBC chairman. Other members of the team would be the registrar of political parties, the controller of budget or his representative and two persons nominated by the commission.

The committee would be responsible for the supervision and administration of campaign financing and would supervise parties and candidates running under party banners or independently.

Political parties would also be required to set up internal campaign expenditure committees to monitor the spending and bookkeeping by candidates and submit reports.

Should the Bill pass, the party expenditure committees will be required to advise their candidates on the rules and regulations they need to stick by and then submit reports from these candidates to the IEBC.

Parties may have to hire accountants and use computer software to keep up with the bookkeeping and accounting required.

Should the proposals sail through Parliament, each party will also be required to establish an expenditure committee at least six months before the elections.

In addition to setting up a campaign expenditure account, each candidate will also be required to establish his or her expenditure committee who should be signatories to the account.

Should Parliament agree with the proposals, all political parties participating in the elections would also be required to submit a financial report to the IEBC within three months of the election date. which will then be transmitted to the Auditor-General.