Political Funding and Spending .. Political Parties Law No. 36 of 2015 in Iraq as a model
Abdul Khaleq Kazem Ibrahim
For the success of democracy, of which elections are the backbone, it is necessary to take into considration the factors affecting it so that it does not turn into a formal and distorted democracy. The ballot box does not alone make true democracy, but multiple factors must cooperate with it for the purpose of achieving its goals, foremost of which is organizing the process of political financing and spending in order to achieve the principle of justice in political and electoral competition. Political financing is one of the biggest challenges facing the political parties, hence, the role played by gov government support for the political parties has emerged.
The problem of political financing began to be associated with the growth of political life, the emergence of political parties, and the adoption of democracy in access to power, and money took a major role in influencing the political life the balance of political forces and changing the course of election results by influencing the will of voters, which contributed in a wide foreign interference. This necessitated the development of legislation and the necessary solutions to prevent this. There is no doubt that “exposing the sources of funding for parties and politicians is a fundamental right of the state and its citizens”.
The issue of political finance stemmed from the experiences of well-established democracies, and those countries adopted it to address serious issues that led to fears of deviating those democratic experiences towards slopes and pitfalls with unimaginable consequences. Therefore, calls for the adoption of public political financing by the state appeared in order to avoid these risks. The success of these experiences in those countries goes back to multiple factors, including the appropriate environment for the success of those experiments and the sincere intention to reform political life and so on. However, despite that, it faced other challenges that arose, because the public political funding required legislation and laws regulating this process.
