Parliament passed with its third and final reading amendments to the election code increasing number of parties eligible to free political TV advertisement during campaign period ahead of the October 8 parliamentary elections from current five to eleven.
But as overall free airtime that the law obligates broadcasters to allot for campaign ads remains unchanged, the amendment will result into reduction of share of free airtime each of eleven parties will be eligible to, causing protest of some non-parliamentary opposition parties, who are lobbying for the presidential veto of the bill.
According to the existing rules, a political party, which garnered at least 4% of votes in previous parliamentary elections or at least 3% in the recent local elections, is eligible to free airtime for political ads during the campaign period.
In case of an election bloc – when several parties team up to run in the elections on the joint ticket – only the top party of the bloc (registered as number one member of the bloc) is eligible to free airtime for ads.
Under this rule only the Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia party is eligible, leaving five current and former members of the Georgian Dream (GD) coalition – Republicans, Conservatives, Industrialists, National Forum and Free Democrats – unqualified for free airtime for political ads. GD coalition parties are running separately, no longer in the bloc, in the upcoming elections.
The newly adopted amendments allow Republicans, Conservatives, Industrialists, National Forum and Free Democrats to also become entitled to free airtime for campaign ads.
The sixth party, which also becomes eligible to free airtime, is a small and little-known Christian-Conservative Party, which was in a formal bloc with the opposition United National Movement (UNM) party in the 2014 local elections.
The new rule of distributing airtime also stems from the May 23, 2016 decision of the Constitutional Court, which ruled partly in favor of a complaint filed by non-parliamentary opposition parties, New Rights and Free Georgia, who claimed that existing rule of distributing free airtime for campaign ads was unfair. The Constitutional Court said that it the clause making only the top party of an election bloc eligible to free airtime for ads was discriminatory.
Other parties, along with the Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia, which are entitled to free airtime even without the newly adopted amendments, are: UNM; United Democrats, led by Nino Burjanadze; Alliance of Patriots, and Labor Party, led by Shalva Natelashvili.
Under the existing rule, the private broadcasters are obliged to allocate 90 seconds for free ads in every three hours to qualified political parties.
Under the newly adopted amendments, although overall free airtime broadcasters will have to allocate is not changing, they will be obliged to distribute it in every hour.
The previous rule, involving allocating 90 second of free airtime for campaign ad to a qualified party in every three hours, was more flexible, allowing private broadcasters to keep more airtime available for paid ads in primetime. Representatives of the private broadcasters have complained that the new rule would deprive them this flexibility, taking away time for high valued ad slots in primetime.
It is not yet clear whether President Giorgi Margvelashvili will sign the amendments into law or veto them; his aides, however, pointed out to the fact that the amendments have caused complaints from non-parliamentary opposition parties, as well as from broadcasters.
