CMEV to track on election expenses | Sunday Observer

CMEV to track on election expenses

2 March, 2020

The Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) will keep tabs on the election campaign expenses of all political parties which would contest the upcoming General Elections, CMEV National Coordinator Manjula Gajanayake said.

Speaking to the Daily News today, he said the CMEV’s campaign cost monitoring initiative, which began for the first time in Sri Lanka during the last Presidential Election, would be continued more systematically at the forthcoming General Elections.

“With the use of our campaign finance tracking tool, we found that a sum of about 4 billion was spent by the 35 candidates who entered the fray at the last Presidential Elections. Of that sum, about Rs 3.6 billion (over 90 percent) was spent by the two front runners at the elections. This time, since more than 5,000 candidates will contest in different parts of the country, our methodology will have to be changed. However, the basics such as tracking the cost of print and electronic media advertisements and social media advertisements of the candidates will remain intact,” he explained.

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