It was only a snippet at the bottom of the page, but Correio da Manhã carried a story last week that showed that the Constitutional Court has detected “irregularities” and “illegalities” in the accounts of all the principal parties in 2011’s legislative elections.
“Only the Bloco de Esquerda, MPT (Earth Party), PH (humanists), POUS (socialist workers) and PAN (animal rights party) presented blameless accounts,” said the newspaper, while Socialist PS accounts, as well as those of the CDS, “lacked back-up documentation”.
Elsewhere the CDU (communist/ green party alliance) was missing expenses clarification and the PSD simply befuddled with illegible handwriting so that it was “impossible to verify” the party’s paperwork.
The worst infractions, according to the paper, came from the Movimento Provida (anti-abortion), which had accepted a free page advertisement in a local paper – “in other words, an expressly prohibited donation”.
The short article, hidden away on the inside pages, failed to elaborate on what, if anything, would come of the Constitutional Court’s findings.
Meantime, 12 political parties have finally been fined for accounting no-no’s from the 2009 elections. Five years on, the parties face a total of €127,450 in fines.
Again, the PSD and CDS-PP coalition parties are high up on the list of offenders, with the Bloco de Esquerda once again coming up squeaky clean.
Other ‘bad accountants’ include the Socialist PS party and the communist PCP/PEV.
