The Central Election Commission (CEC) acted in accordance with the legal provisions when it banned the Chisinau City Hall from distributing informative material about the accomplishments of the municipality, said the Commission’s deputy chairman Pavel Postica. According to him, the local public administration does not have the right to spend public money to promote managerial accomplishments. The Chisinau City Hall started a campaign of public lynching against the CEC even if this institution is independent and treats all the potential election contenders equally, IPN reports.
The CEC banned the broadcasting and spreading of the advertising material “1 000+Important Projects for Chisinau” and obliged the Chisinau City Hall to eliminate all the materials of such a kind from the public space. In reply, the mayor general of Chisinau accused the Commission of political bias and said that the municipality does nothing but tell the citizens how it has spent public funds.
“The Chisinau City Hall groundlessly and unjustifiably started public lynching against the Central Election Commission. The law on advertising clearly explains what a message of public interest is. It is the same advertising that is yet paid by an entity from the public sector. The Chisinau City Hall, as the local public administration, is obliged to use the public funds in accordance with the law. The legislation bans the use of public funds for conducting advertising campaigns to exhibit and boast of one’s managerial accomplishments. This is incorrect,” Pavel Postica stated in the program “Résumé” on RliveTV channel.
The deputy chairman of the CEC said that under the law, no state institution has the right to promote the results they achieved with public money. The local public authorities can promote their projects through the official websites of mayor’s offices without spending money on promotional materials.
“The Chisinau City Hall spent almost 1 million lei in public money on this advertising campaign by which it publicly boasted of managerial accomplishments. This is banned by law. One cannot use public money to promote the managerial accomplishments obtained during the term of office. We applied the same treatment to all those who did this. If the Chisinau City Hall broke the law, we punished it and banned it from distributing promotional material. It happened similarly in the case of the Balti mayor’s office and the Government of the Republic of Moldova, when these were banned from disseminating managerial advertising on Facebook,” said Pavel Postica.
Under a decision taken by the Central Election Commission, only messages of public interest approved by the CEC can be distributed during the electoral period. This way, since August 7 and until the election results are confirmed by the responsible bodies, the media service providers and advertising distributors will be able to disseminate only messages of public interest approved by the CEC.
