The legislation should ban hidden political advertising and electoral stratagems, said experts invited to the program “Moldova live” on the public TV channel Moldova 1, IPN reports.
Pavel Postica, expert of the NGO “Promo-LEX”, said the Moldovan legislation can be interpreted in different ways. The people do not know well the electoral legislation and this is a rather serious problem. “The transparency in party funding is another problem. Electoral publicity should exist, but the people must know where the used money comes from,” he stated.
Andrei Volentir, secretary of the Central Election Commission, said the political advertising is close to going outside the law. “On the one hand, we have the law on political parties that does not ban the parties from advertising in the period between elections. On the other hand, the legislation bans electoral publicity outside the election period. So, if the defining element ‘vote for’ is absent, the parties can place posters with the faces of their leaders everywhere without being hindered,” he stated.
Marian Pocaznoi, chairman of the Broadcasting Coordination Council, said there is a lot of hidden publicity outside the election period. “Regretfully, there are shrewd people who know how to hide the electoral publicity. An example is the greetings by party leaders on the occasion of different holidays disseminated through the electronic media. For the mass media, it is profitable to have more advertisements, but the people suffer as they are manipulated,” he stated.
Marian Pocaznoi also said that the main risk in the current election campaign will be posed by the electoral publicity through retransmitted TV channels, namely the Russian ones. He warned the companies retransmitting these channels that the Council will intervene promptly.
