The Communications Commission has published the second media monitoring report for the 2019 midterm parliamentary elections, midterm Assembly elections and extraordinary elections of mayors of municipalities, covering the period between 31 March and 19 May 2019. 21 broadcasting channels and radio broadcasters were monitored during the reporting period. During the monitoring process, the Commission election advertising, election debates, news and political programmes, as well as public opinion polls and research.

The monitoring process scrutinised paid-for and free election advertising, ensuring that broadcasters allocated political advertising time in a fair and transparent manner. As part of the monitoring of news reports, political programmes and election debates, the Commission focussed on the time allocated by broadcasters to qualified electoral subjects and the coverage of their pre-election activities.  Activities of other political subjects who are involved in the election process were also scrutinised.

The Communications Commission will issue recommendations regarding several issues identified during the election period.

Similar to the presidential elections, campaigning carried out by the so-called technical candidates registered by the qualified electoral subjects remains an issue. During the reporting period, several qualified electoral subjects placed political/election adverts that did not encourage the public to support their own candidates. These qualified electoral subjects only placed political/election adverts in support of other electoral subjects.  Although such actions do not violate the laws under which the Commission conducts the monitoring process, they threaten political pluralism and discriminate against numerous qualified electoral subjects. The Commission believes that by placing election adverts in such a manner, the technical candidates registered by the qualified electoral subjects violate the principles of fairness and place certain qualified electoral subjects in a position of disadvantage. Specifically, while qualified electoral subjects are legally entitled to 90 seconds of free political advertising in each three-hour period, certain candidates ended up receiving considerably more time due to the aforementioned actions.

The subject of Rustavi-2 raising the time limit for free political advertising also remains an issue. The broadcaster first increased the limit from 7.5 minutes in each three-hour period to 9 minutes, and then to 12 minutes during the final week of the election campaign. Certain qualified electoral subjects used the additional time to encourage the public to vote for other electoral subjects. Although these actions by the broadcaster do not violate the law, they threaten political pluralism. Furthermore, the significant increase in the mandatory time limit on free political/election advertising by the national broadcaster may lead to a fall in demand for paid-for political/election advertising, which will negatively affect smaller broadcasters, and regional broadcasters in particular.

To avoid discriminatory approaches during the election period, the Communications Commission wishes to remind broadcasters of their duties under the legislation and call on them to allocate free political/election advertising time to qualified electoral subjects in a fair, even and non-discriminatory manner, ensuring that no individual electoral subject is allocated more than 90 seconds of advertising time.

Publication of opinion poll results was also an issue during the election period. The Commission created records of administrative offences for five media organisations for violating the Electoral Code of Georgia. The records were submitted to the appropriate court for further action. The case concerns the results of the IPSOS S.A. public opinion poll commissioned by Rustavi-2. By publishing these results, broadcasters violated Article 50.5 of the Election Code of Georgia, which prohibits the publishing of election-related opinion poll results within 48 hours before the polling day and until 20:00 on the polling day.

Another remaining issue concerns the pre-election debates. The monitoring process for the reporting period revealed that a number of broadcasters did not hold election debates or failed to include all qualified electoral subjects in their debates. To obtain full information regarding the election debates, the Commission asked broadcasters to provide an appropriate explanation. The feedback received from the broadcasters is currently being analysed, following which the Commission will undertake appropriate measure in accordance with the existing legislation.