Parties spend equal amount in shorter campaign

Parties spend equal amount in shorter campaign

The SPS, the URS, the LDP, and the NDS spent about one million for the same purpose, the NGO said.

Transparency Serbia further noted that officials used their public offices in the campaign to a great extent, and "combined state and party activities during a single visit , for the sake of extra TV time."

In that context, officials' visits to factories and institutions, presentations of plans and signings of memorandums increased ninefold compared to the same period in 2013.

Transparency Serbia presented the findings of its monitoring activities on Friday, and singled out SNS official and Energy Minister Zoran Mihajlović and secretary of the interim city authorities in Belgrade, Goran Vesić, as two prominent examples of this behavior.

It was also said that a total of about EUR 2 million was spent on advertising on billboards in Belgrade, while 11 million went on television campaign broadcast on stations with national coverage .

It was pointed out that at the end of the campaign, 70 percent of all billboards in Belgrade were used to convey political messages, as well as that the organization's estimates were "conservative" - as they did not take into account local broadcasters.

"The identified costs of the election campaign have far exceeded the amount that was distributed from the budget before the election (about 8.9 million according to the state budget) which participants in the election could count on with certainty, as well as the amount that participants had available from known private sources (major donations published on websites). For that reason, after these elections as well, it can be expected that invoices will be settled with budget subsidies that participants were unable to count on before the election, and that they also did not have covered by loans or delayed payment at the time the costs were incurred," said the organization.

So far, large donations have been reported only by two parties, while the final figures are expected within a month.

Asked whether there were indications that Miroslav Mišković's or Darko Šarić's money "somehow entered the campaign", Transparency's representatives said they had no information about that.

Transparency also pointed out that it was "positive that the Serbian president was passive in the campaign."