Serbia's Campaign Finance Reports Need Audits, Not Just Publication

The first campaign-finance reports from the 25 October election have produced a headline that suits the losers: the Serbian Progressive Party says it spent about 181 million dinars, less than the 236 million declared by the Student List. Transparency Serbia says the SNS report leaves out television and billboard costs. SNS has not answered that criticism in public. Neither claim can be settled by reading the reports, and that is the problem.

Self-declared numbers are not accountability

Serbia's system asks parties to tell the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption what they spent. It does far less to check whether they are right. Transparency Serbia notes that the Agency has not opened proceedings over obvious inconsistencies in earlier reports. A declared RTS advance of about 158.5 million dinars without invoices, and figures that put one list's share of TV election advertising at 89%, are exactly the kind of items that should trigger a check rather than a shrug.

Check everyone, starting now

The fair answer is not to assume that SNS under-reported or that the Student List over-spent. It is to audit all lists by the same standard. The Agency can compare declared spending with the airtime and billboard space that were actually used, ask broadcasters and agencies for their invoices, and publish the results in a searchable format before the presidential election due by the end of December.

A test for the new majority too

The Student List has promised accountability. It can show that it means it by welcoming a full audit of its own report first, and by giving the Agency the staff and powers it needs in the first months of the new parliament. Campaign money is where trust in elections is won or lost. Publishing the numbers was step one; checking them is the step that matters.