Regulations of the Coverage of Pre-Election Campaign May Get Severer

Tamta Tvalavadze

Nongovernmental organizations developed package of legislative changes about media coverage of the pre-election campaign. In the frame of the inter-fraction group of the legislative body the discussion about the bill is planned on June 13. 

Transparency International – Georgia, International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy and Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association developed the package.

The legislative changes refer to such significant aspects of the pre-election process, like: completion of the notion of political/pre-election advertisement; prohibition of hidden political advertisement; obligation to spread information about the advertising expenditures by administrative bodies; regulation of the placement of social advertisements.

“The legislative changes are sort of recommendations and were developed in the frame of the project This Affects You to eradicate old negative experience. The provisions in it shall be regulated together with the authors, representatives of media organizations, inter-fraction group in order to combat ill interpretation of the law in the pre-election period,” said one of the authors of the draft-amendments, Media-Analyst from Transparency International Georgia Mamuka Andguladze.  

Particular attention is paid to the hidden political advertisement in the package of legislative changes developed by NGOs. The authors suggest to add large clarification of the hidden political advertisement in the Article 2 of the Election Code and to introduce preventive measures to combat its dissemination through electronic media. Namely, in the first case of using hidden political advertisement by electronic media, organization will receive written warning; if it is repeated, the organization will be fined with 500 and then with 1 500 lari.

Representatives of the nongovernmental organization state that their final purpose is to make the Election Code more perfect.

“Participants of the discussion will have opportunity to present their comments and proposals to the authors of the bill with regard to the package,“ the joint statement of the NGOs reads.