Electoral College rejects CEC decison

02/05/2011 16:30

The Electoral College of the Court of Appeal rejected the decision of
the Central Election Commission regarding electoral news reports videos
pre-edited by the political parties and their staff in these local
elections campaign.

The Electoral College reviewed the decision of the Central Election Commission, which had added some rules for the media coverage on the electoral campaign.

With the partial proposition of four Media Monitoring Board members, the Central Election Commission (CEC) acknowledged the parties the right of deciding the broadcasting time in private media for their candidates. The Radio Televisions should be obliged to respect the broadcasting time set by the political parties.
The CEC decision obliged TVs to accept electoral videos pre-edited by the political parties as news reports during the campaign, in case the TVs would not dispose the necessary means to cover these activities by themselves.

But CEC does not specify the cases when the candidates did not notify the TV stations on their activities. The three other members of CEC opposed this decision immediately.
This case, called “the videos case”, spurred a wide public debate on the right that the political parties have to cover their own campaign with their own means.
This debate was presented at the Electoral College, where the judges questioned the CEC and DP representatives on the reasons that made them take this decision.

One of the questions had to do with the right that article 10 of the European Convent of human rights acknowledges to the citizens for taking and communicating information and ideas without the interference of the public authorities.

The lawyer of the Democratic Party answered to these questions saying that CEC decision did not reflect any interference by the public authorities.
The Socialist Party argued that the CEC decision was taken against the protocol, because it is not within CEC competences to modify the Election Code.

The decision affected the whole territory of the republic, thus becoming a normative act. The Election Code requires not four, but five votes in favor for a decision of this kind.
The Electoral College accepted the complaint and rejected the CEC decision as unfounded.

Top Channel