EC move to exempt parties on audit issue
THE decision by the Election Commission to exempt 39 political parties from submitting their annual audit reports to it is extremely unfortunate. All these parties were expected to submit these reports by July 31 this year, an instruction they failed to follow through. The fact that the EC has simply acquiesced in the parties' refusal to come forward with the audit reports is a defeat for the body and, worse, will surely give the impression that it is ill-equipped to have its authority accepted or respected. If the EC has been defeated, conversely it can be said that the political parties have, by defying the instructions of the commission, won a victory which again does not advance the cause of democratic politics in the country.
By not submitting the audit reports, the political parties have sent out a pretty bad signal to the country. It is that no matter what the Election Commission may do about streamlining politics, the parties can with impunity ignore the body and go ahead with their own programmes as to how they mean to operate. In this present instance, despite having registered themselves with the EC before the general elections of last year, the parties have conveyed the feeling that efforts to take politics on to a high moral ground can easily and automatically be blocked if they simply look the other way. And once that happens, there can only be sympathy for the Election Commission. It really had no options here. There were simply no means by which it could have its directives enforced. The glaring truth for the EC is that if the political parties choose not to heed its message, there is no mechanism it can employ to have that message heard. Which is a pity.
The Election Commission has now decided that the parties can submit audit accounts of their financial transactions by July next year. Having seen the parties ignore the deadline set for last July, the EC clearly hopes that it can save face by giving them a whole new year to make amends for their failure. We believe that this time round, the parties ought not to come up with excuses or stay silent on the audit issue. For all its defeat and its limitations, the EC has taken a pragmatic move by giving the parties a fresh opportunity to clear their record.
Finally, we think it is necessary to remind our political parties that on such issues as audit accounts and the like it is for them to come forth voluntarily with information about their activities. As organizations professing to uphold the interests of the people, they owe it to themselves and to the nation to do everything which ensures transparency and accountability in politics. By failing to meet the audit-related deadline of July 31 this year, they have taken things backward. Let us hope this story will not be repeated in July 2010.
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