How Jubilee and NASA spent millions on election campaigns

Jubilee Party spent the highest amount of money ahead of the August 8 general election, a report on political parties spending has revealed.

The party spent about Sh312,141,620 on advertisements aired between January 1 to August 4, 2017, being 65 per cent of total political parties' advertising expenditure.

NASA was second with Sh155,153,840, accounting for 33 per cent of ad spends within the period, while Maendeleo Chap Chap spent Sh1,812,300.

PNU was the fourth largest spender at Sh1,725,600 whereas ODM as a party spent Sh1,350,410.

Liberal Democratic Party and National Agenda Party of Kenya were at the bottom of the rank having spent Sh73,300 and Sh50,000 respectively.

The parties spent most on Radio and TV compared to what they spent on print.

The parties spent a chunk of their budgets in July, being 38 per cent, with TV and Radio prime time placements taking huge amounts of cash.

"This (July) was at a time when the top political parties; Jubilee and NASA held intensive campaigns in a bid to woo voters in various counties."

The report also states that there was high spending in February was during the voter registration drive across the country.

In terms of the main media houses, NASA spent spent more money on Citizen TV while Jubilee channelled its ad spends across a wide variety of TV stations.

Other parties that took part in the election spent monies as follows; Party Peoples Trust Party (Sh73,710), National Labour Party (Sh146,600),

Movement For Democracy And Growth (Sh195,300),

Frontier Alliance Party (Sh197,570),

United Democratic Movement Party (Sh206,000), and PPK (Sh206,000).

The Peoples Democratic Party spent Sh206,000, Democratic Party Of Kenya (Sh289,000),

Kenya National Congress (Sh353,240),

Narc-Kenya (Sh787,100), while Kanu spent Sh1,028,440.

Last year, IEBC set out regulations on financing stating that parties can receive

up to Sh15.03 billion ($148.2 million) in contributions with a single source limited to Sh3 billion ($29.5 million).

According to the regulations,

Presidential candidates were limited to spending Ksh5.25 billion ($51.8 million) while those contesting for the governor/senator/women representative seats were be allowed to spend up to Sh433 million ($4.3 million).