The Communications Commission notes that the public objections made by the Media Advocacy Coalition (MAC) regarding the changes to the “Ordinance on Media Participation in the Election Process and the Approval of its Use” are dishonest and baseless, serving to ensure that reports by international organisations contain false information. Indeed, a representative from the MAC could not substantiate his own remarks at yesterday’s meeting of the Commission.

COMCOM presented draft amendments to the aforementioned ordinance at the hearing session and published them in accordance with the public administrative procedures and timescales. Therefore, all interested parties had the opportunity to present any remarks and objections to the Commission for the duration of 24 working days. It is worth noting that the public administrative procedure regarding the amendments to the ordinance started in March 2020, meaning that the document was publicly available for three months. However, the MAC chose to raise objections shortly before the COMCOM meeting, first in public, and then through an official letter that reached the Commission 10 minutes before the start of the session. The raising of the objections mere weeks before the upcoming parliamentary elections gives us grounds to suspect that it is in the interests of the NGOs to see inaccurate information about the current media environment in Georgia appear in the pre-election reports of international organisations.

COMCOM states that the Media Advocacy Coalition’s objections to the changes in the “Ordinance on Media Participation in the Election Process and the Approval of its Use” are baseless. The amendments were conditioned by the changes in the Election Code and served to bring the two documents in line with each other. Articles that were removed from the ordinance were identical to and overlapped with articles in the Election Code.

With regards to MAC’s objections concerning the definition of the term ‘media,’ COMCOM notes that it removed the definition of this term from its ordinance due to the fact that it is not used in connection with any regulations. All regulations will only relate to specific subjects – broadcasters and state-funded newspapers. COMCOM’s powers in the election process are defined by the Election Code of Georgia and the Law on Broadcasting. Therefore, neither COMCOM’s normative act, nor the draft amendments to the ordinance could have the effect of increasing the Commission’s powers and broadening the circle of subjects under its regulation.

Regarding free and paid-for advertising, MAC’s representatives failed to present any arguments in support of their objections on this issue at COMCOM’s public meeting. However, the Commission once again explained to them that the timeframes for placing free and paid-for adverts were only included in the ordinance for more clarity regarding the regulation, and in accordance with the Election Code. The Commission also clarified that the ordinance only concerns the election period and does not apply to other time periods.

It is therefore fundamentally wrong to suggest that the requirements for election campaigning and advertising by broadcasters have become superficial. In reality, the version of the ordinance that is currently still in force contains verbatim copies of various articles from the Election Code and does not regulate anything different, which is of no benefit to anyone. The sub-legislative normative act aims to fulfil and specify the legislative act, rather than to duplicate the terms of the legislative act without a change. As for the general obligations that COMCOM’s subjects are bound by in accordance with the Election Code and the Law on Broadcasting, rather than having them copied from these documents verbatim, they are only being referenced in the normative act, which is justified from the legal and technical point of view. It certainly does not render the regulations superficial, because it does not matter whether a specific norm is duplicated in several normative acts, or if it is only spelled out in one normative act and simply referenced elsewhere. On the contrary, the former alternative is unjustified from a legal point of view.

The objection regarding the timeframes for pre-election advertising is also unsubstantiated and superfluous. The law states that free or paid-for advertising for election purposes is not permitted until 50 days before the voting day.

Specifically, the Election Code clearly determines that the rates for election adverts submitted by broadcasters to the Central Election Commission come into force 50 days before the vote, meaning that it is impossible to place paid-for political adverts at an earlier date. As for free political advertising, the Election Code stipulates that broadcasters must allocate a certain period of time to free political adverts starting from 50 days before the voting day. It is prohibited to allocate more time to free advertising than stipulated by law. Therefore, if broadcasters were to allocate time for free political adverts earlier than 50 days before the vote, they would exceed the amount of time specified within the law. Thus, the ordinance does not expand the existing lawful timeframes for placing election adverts.

Following from the above, COMCOM calls on members of the Media Advocacy Coalition to cooperate with the Commission and refrain from levelling unsubstantiated and baseless accusations.