Meikar Defends State Support for Political Parties
Ahead of a People's Assembly debate taking place today on party financing, former MP Silver Meikar has said that practice of providing state support for parties should continue, despite widespread calls by participants in the citizens' initiative to halt it.
Meikar, who will be taking part in today's debate, told ETV this morning that the discussion on how to change the status-quo for financing would be interesting.
“When we look back at the Ice Cellar initiative [which launched the People's Assembly], of the five great goals that were phrased there, two touched on [party] financing. The first states that party funding should be honest and transparent, and that influence peddling should decrease. The other goal deals with increasing competitiveness between parties,” said Meikar.
He said that all proposals forwarded to the People's Assembly should be evaluated on the basis of how they help to achieve the stated goals. The debate today may find, according to Meikar, that many laws that were initially held to be unacceptable may still be found useful.
“All Western European nations fund political parties from the state budget. The reason for this is the desire to decrease the influence of money or businesses on the process of political decision making. The most popular proposal was the one to cut state funding for parties. We must imagine what this would entail. Now, if we find it necessary that Estonia has democratic competition between parties, we should admit that state funding is needed. We can debate on how to precisely divide it,” said Meikar.
Meikar, who is also an expert with the assembly, said that proposals it has received have been wide ranging, but that the subject of party financing from state coffers has ruffled the most feathers.
The People's Assembly is an initiative proposed by President Toomas Hendrik Ilves last November during a meeting he called with decision makers in light of widespread criticism of the government.
Meikar himself is intimately tied in the public's mind to the party financing issue. The then Reform Party MP admitted last May to funneling funds from questionable donations to the party - a scandal that would later be dubbed “Silvergate.” That, in turn, started the wave criticism towards the government and political parties that eventually led to the President's initiative.
This month, the more popular of the People's Assembly proposals are being debated at public meetings and will be presented to the Parliament by Ilves.