19 November 2004	Friday	06 Shawwal 1425

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 18: All political parties of the country have been accused of fudging the true figures of their annual income, assets and expenditure statements submitted to the Election Commission of Pakistan , says a report on political parties published recently.

The report, titled "Political parties in Pakistan: Disabled by design," has been published by Freedom Publishers with the support of Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

According to the report, all political parties in Pakistan have to come up with some cooked up figures by August 29 every year to fulfil the legal requirement of submitting an annual statement of their income and expenditure.

The report says the Election Commission seldom blows the whistle. "The 342 members of National Assembly (MNA), 100 Senators and 728 members of four provincial assemblies do fulfil the requirements of election laws but in a bit trickier fashion."

According to the report, in 2003, out of 73 political parties registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), only 45 submitted their accounts. However, the ECP failed to put this vital information on its official website.

The ECP has repeated the practice in 2004 and it is expected that it will help initiate a meaningful debate and discussion on the issue. In 2004, some 59 political parties submitted their accounts. Out of these, 11 were not properly audited and one was not delivered in the prescribed manner. According to the Election Commission about 34 political parties failed to submit their accounts.

The report accuses the elected representatives of hiding the actual expenditure incurred on their election campaign.

An analysis of the accounts based on the figures collected from the Election Commission and the Auditor General of Pakistan, shows Pakistan Muslim League as the richest political party having Rs36 worth of assets. Its head office on Margalla Road is perhaps the most expensive property owned by any political party in Pakistan. "But the property is politically disputed for it was acquired by PML-N and forcefully occupied by PML after the military takeover."

The reports says PML's two coalition partners, Pakistan People's Party Patriots and Grand National Alliance, were reported to be almost penniless in the details of the parties funds for the year 2002-2003.

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has assets worth Rs24.7 million. Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf has a liability of Rs100,000 and many non-representative parties have a slight difference in earnings and expenditures.

Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians reported an income and closing balance of Rs1,000 only to the authorities. The report says Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians fixed the fee of Rs25,000 for its ticket for the Senate and the National Assembly and Rs15,000 for the provincial assembly.

The party received more than 1,500 applications from all over the country and was able to collect about Rs30.2 million. It says on December 16, 2002, Rao Sikandar Iqbal alleged that the party charged Rs100,000 from each ticket-holder in the name of campaign material and collected Rs80 million. But, according to him, it did very little electoral campaigning.

According to the report the opening balance of the MMA was zero and now it has Rs133,862 in its account; Jamaat-i-Islami has Rs377,995, while its assets are worth Rs1,419,115; Pir Pagaro's PML Functional, Rs200,000; JUI of Maulana Samiul Haq, Rs320,00; Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Rs349,000; PML-Zia, Rs32,000 and Dr Tahirul Qadri's PAT Rs1,418,000.

The report says on May 19, 2004 the dissidents in Pakistan Awami Tehrik while creating their own faction under the name of "Caravan" claimed that for election 2002 the party had raised Rs100 million from abroad in just 25 days.

According to the report, the figures submitted to the Election Commission do not explain the entire picture because the parties spend much more than their declared funds.

Modest calculations of campaign expenditure, in reality, are almost triple of the authorized limits i.e. Rs1.5 million for a National and Rs1 million for a provincial constituency, the report says.

Citing interviews with politicians, the report gives estimates of legally allowed and actual expenditure incurred by the politicians for elections in addition to the expenditure they are expected to meet by attending all important marriages and funerals in their constituency and dozens of local and long distance calls to win favour of their supporters.

The total expenditure incurred by a politician for elections is estimated to be Rs10.629 million. According to the report, the limit of expenditure for the National Assembly seat is Rs1.5 million and Rs1 million for the provincial assembly seat.

The report says the funding of political parties raised many critical questions in 1994 when a former director-general of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) confessed that the agency had distributed over Rs140 million among the favourite politicians during the 1990 general election. However, a human rights petition filed by Air Marshal (retired) Muhammad Asghar Khan with the Supreme Court against former COAS Mirza Mohammad Aslam Beg, former ISI chief Lt Gen Asad Durrani and Younas Habib of Mehran Bank, relating to the disbursement of public money and its misuse for political purposes, is still pending.

The report suggests that nothing has changed since 1994 and the intelligence networks continue to spend taxpayers money to fix our future.