Parties spend equal amount in shorter campaign

Parties spend equal amount in shorter campaign

BELGRADE -- Although the recent election campaign was shorter than the one in 2012, about the same amount of money has been spent, said Transparency Serbia.

The parties spent millions, with the Progressives' TV ads being by far the priciest and costing the party about EUR 4 million (41 percent of total funds spent on TV advertising ).

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...