Themes & Issues by Country
Burkina Faso
While it is true that the legislature provided provisions for political parties to receive public financing for their operations and election campaigns, it must also be noted that this legislation has many shortcomings. During election campaigns, whether presidential, legislative or municipal, each party or candidate receives public funding per the stipulations of the law. For the presidential election, the allocated amount is divided equally between competing candidates. For legislative and municipal elections, this amount is distributed in proportion to the number of lists and candidates nominated in constituencies…
Chad
Electoral campaigns are strictly regulated by the Electoral Code of Chad. The Code determines both the length of campaigns and the authorities who have the mandate to regulate them. Electoral campaigns last 20 full days. A campaign must end 24 hours before the day of the elections. In the past, electoral campaigns lasted 30 days for presidential elections and 21 days for all the other elections. Given that the CENI (National Independent Electoral Committee) was unable to comply with these deadlines, changes were made to this provision of the Electoral Code so that the length of electoral campaigns for all elections was set at 20 days…
Mali
Article 29 of the Political Parties Charter stipulates that political parties may receive financial support from the Government’s budget equal to 0.25% of the country’s fiscal revenue. The General Office of Elections (DGE) is responsible for managing public funds for political parties. In order to be eligible to receive public funding, political parties must fulfill a number of obligations as listed in Article 30 of the Political Parties Charter. They are as follows: the party must meet on a regular basis; it must have a national headquarters exclusively dedicated to the activities of the party; it must have a bank account in a financial institution located in Mali; it must present an annual statement of all its assets to the financial Section of the Supreme Court, by the 31st of March of each calendar year at the latest. Parties must also account for their financial resources and the origin and use of these resources; as stipulated by Article 27 they must demonstrate the ownership of an account, the good standing and sincerity of which are certified by an audit report of the Financial Section of the Supreme Court; and finally the must have participated in the most recent legislative and municipal elections…
Mauritania
Ordinance 2006-034, which creates the High Authority for Audiovisual Media and the Press (HAPA), allowed Mauritania to have an institution for the regulation of public and private media for the first time. This ordinance was abrogated and replaced by Law 2012-018 of February 28, 2012. HAPA is an independent administrative institution with financial autonomy and a mandate to oversee the enforcement of the legislation regulating the media. Its mandate is also to guarantee the equal treatment of media entrepreneurs…
Niger
The Charter governing political parties determines the conditions under which political parties are funded. Article 26 of the Charter states that the resources of political parties consist of membership dues, the proceeds from the sale of membership cards, gifts, bequests, income derived from their activities, and subsidies and aid from the State. Gifts and bequests are reported to the Ministry of Interior within one month and they cannot exceed 50% of the party’s own assets if they originate from a physical person who is a citizen of Niger. They cannot, under any circumstances, exceed 20% of the party’s resources should they originate from abroad…
Senegal
The funding of political parties is an old controversy that has not yet been resolved in Senegal. In 1984, the then-opposition politician Abdoulaye Wade had asked the Chair of the National Assembly to have the legislature initiate a law providing a formal status to the opposition and for the financing of political parties. Despite the eventual concession and good will of President Abdou Diouf in appointing Professor Elhadji M’Bodji (a prominent law professor) as Mediator (by decree no 98-657 of August 7, 1998) to attempt to favorably resolve the issue, and in spite of the often vigorous debates on the issue during Abdoulaye Wade’s presidency, the funding of political parties in Senegal is still unregulated by any law…
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