Big BN Spending In Ads Within Three Days

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA: Transparency International president Tan Sri Raymond Navaratnam pointed out that according to the supervision of the council, BN has used some RM1.5 million for their elections advertisements in 18 domestic newspapers within three days, which are from 25th to 27th Feb.

He said that according to the Election Act 1954, parliamentary seat candidates can't spend more than RM200,000, while state seat candidates can't spent more than RM100,000. The total budget for BN for their 222 parliamentary seats and 505 state seats are RM98.4 million.

“From the nomination day until now, BN has used up 1.11% of the budget in the election advertisement campaign. Based on their seat ratio, every BN parliamentary seat candidate and state seat candidate have averagely spent RM2,220 and RM1,103 respectively.

Navaratnam said in a statement that the BN parliamentary seat candidate and state seat candidate can only spend an average of RM197,780 and RM98,897 respectively in the coming 10 days of campaign period.

He added that according to the parliamentary and state seats, the elections campaign budget for PKR, PAS and DAP shouldn't be more than RM36.8 million, RM36.7 million and RM19.5 million respectively. Furthermore, the three opposition parties have not published any campaign advertisements.

In the 12th general elections, PKR is contesting 97 parliamentary seats and 174 state seats, PAS 66 parliamentary seats and 235 state seats, while DAP 47 parliamentary seats and 101 state seats.

“We call upon all the political parties to disclose their campaign advertising expenses and instruct the candidates to report the amount of they spent in campaign advertisements. EC should also check the candidates' election expenses. They should factually report to the police once the candidates report less expenses.”

Transparency International Malaysia surveys the six local English daily, five Malay daily, four Chinese-language daily and three Tamil-language daily during the elections campaign period and calculate the expenses according to the normal advertising rates.

The council will begin to calculate the television advertising expenses from 28 Feb onwards. Elections short films are expected to be broadcast soon. (Sin Chew Daily)