CEC blocks SP TV ads

The TV ad “Kush është Luli” targets Lulëzim Basha, Democratic Party’s candidate for Mayor of Tirana. “Kurrë më” promotes opposition’s arguments against the government.

The law allows participating electoral subjects, like the Socialist Party, to broadcast political ads.

But the majority of the Media Monitoring Board (MMB) argued that it is impossible to identify the political subject in the campaign ad “Kurrë më”.

“The ordering subject is the Socialist Party, but we cannot identify the ordering subject by watching the TV ad”, said Basir Çollaku, MMB chairman.

Same goes for the electoral ad “Kush është Luli”. Furthermore, according to the 4 members of MMB majority, with these ads ‘the consumers’ interest has been prejudiced”.

MMB supports its argument on the law for radio-television ads, which provides that RTV broadcasters are obliged to guarantee fair ads and not ads that damage the others, that are untrue and that prejudice the consumers’ interest.

According to minority MMB members, this law is valid only for commercial advertisements.

“The law that CEC refers to is valid only for commercial ads and not for political ads”, one of the members said.

But this argument was not taken under consideration. The minority MMB member suggested that the Interior Ministry TV ad on visa liberalization, which praises Lulëzim Basha for the time when he was Interior Minister, is classified as a passed political time of the candidate Basha.

CEC did not take under consideration even this proposition. The majority MMB members had also provided in their decision penalties of 2 million ALL for “Vizion+”, “News24” and “OraNews”, and 3.5 million for “Top Channel”.

According to four board members, these televisions had continued broadcasting these TV ads although MMB had ordered them to block the ads two or three days ago.

Despite the proposition of four of the MMB members, CEC ordered the blocking of the TV ads only yesterday evening.

On these conditions, CEC thought that penalties were inappropriate.

CEC decision was unanimous on MMB proposition for compensating the blocked TV broadcasting time with news from RTV operators.

Until the end of the election campaign, the Board will present to the CEC four weekly reports and one final report.

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