Lawyer Julio Cesar Castanos Guzman says that the continuing increases in the use of taxpayer money for political campaigning is turning political parties into profit-making businesses. The political parties have received RD$593.7 million of taxpayer money for the 2006 congressional and municipal party campaigns and are requesting more. So much money could even harm the parties, because the money just feeds an increasing bureaucracy, he explained. “The original patriotic nature of the organization is lost with the availability of so much money, and they become political businesses,” he said. The former Central Electoral Board judge said that if this uncontrolled funding continues in the long term, then the situation would destroy the country’s party system. He argued that the handing of so much money is a temptation and that if there were no controls on spending, the parties end up becoming employment centers.
“That ends up sponsoring “zanganismo politico” (political parasitism), and the voracious parasites of a bureaucracy that eats everything up and doesn’t produce anything, which erases the parties’ original purpose,” he said, as reported in Hoy newspaper.
According to Electoral Law 275-97, three leading political parties (PLD, PRD and PRSC) will receive 80% of the taxpayer funding available to political parties. Minority parties get the remaining 20%.
The money is in addition to the more than RD$800 million allotted in the 2006 budget to the non-governmental organizations under present legislators.