 Hello and welcome to this session on Budgeting and Financing of Elections. My name is Erik Asplund. I'm a Program Officer here at International Idea. And today I'm joined by Rumbizai Kandoa-Shika Nundu, the head of our Idea Political Participation and Representation Team. Rumbizai, before we begin, I was wondering if you could just say a little bit about your professional background. Thanks, Erik. And good morning, everyone. My work is mostly on political participation and representation broadly, with a particular focus on gender equality and women's empowerment, political parties processes, especially the intra-party democracy processes, and also strengthening of political parties broadly as institutions that can support democracy building. And there's a very big and important component in that respect on political financing or money in politics, how political financing plays a major role in the work that political parties have to do, in the work that institutions for building and supporting democracy such as electoral management bodies have to do. So my background is a combination of all those factors, and of course the parliamentary strengthening aspect. I have a strong background on working with parliaments across the world, but mostly with a very huge focus. I've had a huge focus in Africa. Thank you. So first question. Yes. Could you please describe the global trends on political finance for political parties and candidates for elections? Erik, from the work that we are doing under political participation and representation, and this is really knowledge-based informed by the political finance database that we are developing, which currently has about 180 countries. It's very clear that the global trends around the issue of political financing are on, let me call them, four main aspects. Public funding, what countries are doing to ensure that political parties receive public funding of access to resources. There's also the component of private funding because there are also several corporate organizations and even individual persons that are also contributing to the five political financing of political parties. So that's the other aspect of private funding. But with all of that, there's a very strong trend that is growing on the issues of reporting to what extent political parties as entities that can support democracy building are they being regulated to report on the money, the access, the resources that they receive, and the sources where the money is coming from and also how they spend it on what aspects. And then the fourth component and trend to reinforce all of that is the oversight. The entities and oversight bodies that are being put in place in different countries across the world to perform an oversight function on the reporting that is done by political parties with regards to the finance that they have and how they use that finance. So if we put it all together, essentially what we are seeing is an international idea and what we are collecting to provide information, knowledge-based information to different actors and boundary partners and stakeholders that we work with, it's about trends related to public funding, what is happening in that component. Private funding, issues and frameworks for reporting and the oversight entities and bodies around the issues of political financing. And maybe I might also just give you an illustrative example. From the 180 countries that we have currently on the political finance database, you find that 71% of those countries, they provide direct political financing to political parties. So that's actually quite a good number out of 180, 71% of the countries they provide public funding to political parties. So it shows also that political parties are remaining as central entities for democracy development and multi-party politics. But why is public funding so important for political parties in Canada? I think it's very clear that it's important in several respects. One of them, of course, is to ensure that political parties, if we seriously regard them as institutions, remember the workers idea that we do, we focus on institutions and processes. And if political parties are strongly regarded as institutions that can support democracy building, they need to have resources to conduct their work and their mandate effectively. Especially given the fact that we say political parties, in spite of their challenges, and this is not to say that they are very effective in terms of their mandates, but in spite of their challenges, they still remain like the recognized entities that is able to bring together voices and interests and aspirations of different segments of people in different countries or societies. So for that reason, it's important to facilitate or at least allow some measure of elements of resources to be made available to political parties. But it is also important in terms of regulation, because if it's open and there are no direct regulatory measures on political financing, you will actually find that that's where we probably end up with the risk of the illicit flow of money into politics, which is and can be a big threat to democracy. But also, it also limits even the ability of other actors, of other maybe emerging political parties or emerging political movements or platforms or interest groups to engage in politics in a sustainable way if there is no support in any form to political parties to be able to conduct their work. Just as much as we have now, because you see most of our countries, they have regulations about the establishment of political parties. So this goes hand in hand with the recognition that political parties have a significant role, play a significant contribution, bring and perform a significant contribution in democracy building. Just as much as we will see our countries with different regulatory frameworks for the establishment of electoral management bodies to manage and administer elections and even the establishment and existence of civil society organizations to provide platforms for engagement and interaction. So it's also similar with regards to political parties, even though of course there are sensitivities on the fact that they deal with ideological and political issues, but that's what democracy is all about, the diversity of views and spaces for people to express their views. You talked about reporting before. Now how can reporting be maintained by political parties and candidates? Maybe you have a few examples. If we look at the issue of reporting, several countries putting in place, there's a mixture of the mechanisms for reporting. In some countries, in fact, if we look at our political finance database, I think at least about 69% of the countries that we have, there's the reporting which is done through the electoral management body. Because in some countries, the resources that are allocated or the finance, the funding that is provided to political parties is channeled through an electoral management body. Let's say, for instance, I'm thinking of Cape Verde. They are the ones who receive the money that goes to the political parties. And of course there's a criteria, which is something also very detailed, but all of those things are available in our funding of political parties and the Electoral Campaign's publication. And that criteria stipulates how much a political party gets. And then, of course, it then provides the timing in terms of when political parties are supposed to submit their financial reports. Like for instance, in Rwanda, do they submit to the Ombudsperson's office? Do they submit to the electoral management body? But then it goes also to the auditor general to go through and review the reports. So there's a combination of reporting mechanisms and also the timing. In several of the countries we've seen that they require the political parties to submit their financial reports for whatever resources that they have received, like within a year of either maybe after an election or after every annual year before they can receive another dispassment. So there are various combinations. And in some countries, for instance, it's even a parliamentary committee. The specialized parliamentary committee can be set up to look at the financial reports that are received from political parties. So there are a combination of these mechanisms for reporting and also the timing. But in most of the cases that we are seeing, political parties are required to provide annual reports on their expenditures and reporting. But having said that, Eric, the effectiveness and, of course, the extent to which this actually happens in practice, it also differs. Because the frameworks are there, the laws for that are there, and even the entities and institutions that should have the oversight and receive the reports are there. But it doesn't necessarily mean that it happens as effectively as it is put down on paper. Just to say I thought I can read that you might want to get to that aspect. Last question then. Why do you think that political finance issues are so crucial for a democracy goal? The issues of political finance are so crucial, Eric, because for me one of the aspects that we see is the element of trying to level the playing field. Because money matters for democracy, democracy costs money. But at the same time, if it's not effectively regulated, I think it can be very chaotic. And this is where sometimes people get the sense that democracy is for rich people or a certain class. It becomes like a class issue because the ordinary citizens or the ordinary people, they cannot automatically even visualize or see themselves being able to have the aspirations and even the ability to present themselves as candidates for election, for elective positions of power and decision making. So because of the cost that is also attached to electoral processes, political campaigns and democracy broadly, political finance becomes very key in terms of how it is managed as a key component of democracy. First of all, to basically allow for leveling of the playing field so that there's no undue influence and flow of illicit money into politics and into electoral campaigns. Another aspect that remains very key, which we are pursuing as an international idea, is leveling of the playing field not just between different political groupings but also between women and men, which is why as an international idea we are investing a lot in the work that we are doing on gender targeted public funding for political parties. The extent to which political parties can be required and expected to allocate some of the resources for gender mainstreaming and to clarify that gender is not synonymous with women but for empowering both women and men in terms of their perspectives, in terms of their attitudes towards the political participation and representation of both women and men in positions of power and decision making at all levels. And this is so much in line with the SDG-5 and the targets that we are set and also so much in line with SDG-16, in which idea we are pushing on inclusive institutions that are accountable, that are also transparency and have integrity. So the area of political finance is very key because it really has a strong influence on the integrity of democracy and electoral processes and the outcome of elections because without any regulatory frameworks and a close eye and tracking on the aspect of political financing, the integrity of democracy can be undermined because essentially this is where you see a lot of incidences and occurrences of vote buying because taking advantage of people's economic status and poverty and even a lot of complaints that access to information on electoral processes be it access to information on voter registration, who is able to access a voter registration point, access to information on civic and voter education, who is able to do that. All of those processes in order for them to be implemented effectively, they need political financing. So political financing, electoral financing processes, financing of electoral processes, they are very much interlinked because what you invest in terms of financing politics, consequently, ultimately has an impact on the outcome of elections and electoral processes. So this is why for international idea, the issue of political financing is very central, not just for levelling the playing field, but more for allowing citizens to engage and being able to engage, even if they don't have big money, because democracy and elections cannot just be about people who have money. But what about others who are also marginalized or disadvantaged in certain ways, economically and otherwise? Yeah, political parties may have an important role in voter and civic education, like you said. Precisely. Thank you very much. Thank you Eric. Thank you to the audience for watching.