Polish political parties spend most of their money on self-promotion and creating a credible image instead of on the platform and programme.

Parties spend on average 100 million zloty (24 million euro) on PR and marketing, which is most of their budget, says Eryk Mistewicz, a political consultant. Mistewicz adds that parties’ expenditures are hardly ever monitored.

Civic Platform, the biggest party in the Polish parliament, spent almost 2 million zloty (480,000 euro) on self-promotion, commercials, training and media relations between January and September 2009. The Democratic Left Alliance paid 250,000 zloty (60,400 euro) for training and experts and 78,000 zloty (19,000 euro) for PR. The Law and Justice, the main opposition party, spent just over one million zloty on PR, while the coalition Polish Peasant’s Party did not want to reveal their numbers, writes the daily Rzeczpospolita.

Election campaigns are the most money-consuming. Civic Platform, Law and Justice and Polish Peasant’s Party spent 10 million zloty (2.4 million euro) each on campaign to the European Parliament, while the Democratic Left Alliance and another left-wing party - the Labour Union - spent 7 million zloty (1.7 million euro) on the euro-campaign. (mg/mmj)

Source: Rzeczpospolita