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Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections: Lack of BC’s Promptness and Efficiency Has Not Contributed to Ensuring Free and Fair Elections

13 July 2021
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În Moldova
The Broadcasting Council (BC) “failed to exercise supervision and control with the utmost diligence,” according to one of the conclusions of the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections (CFFE) on conducting the election campaign and the day of the early parliamentary elections held on July 11. The statement by the CFFE consisting of 36 public organizations from the Republic of Moldova was publicly presented on July 13.
 
The Coalition has stated that, during the campaign, with a few exceptions, “the media behaved in a biased way, reflected election participants in an unbalanced manner, and failed to provide complex information about the election process and exercising the right to vote to the public.” Broadcasting media service monitoring reveals disproportionate presentation of the election participants, especially when comparing the Electoral Bloc of Communists and Socialists and the other participants.
 
At the same time, the CFFE experts have concluded that the BC failed to exercise its mission properly in relation to all the suppliers who had breached the legislation during the election campaign. “The Broadcasting Council, the regulatory broadcasting authority failed to exercise supervision and control with the utmost diligence and good faith and take timely decisions to ensure that the candidates are correctly and impartially covered by all broadcasting media service providers,” the report states.

In addition, the Coalition’s observers have mentioned that the BC issued the only monitoring report during the election campaign, it stated breaches of the legislation committed by several broadcasters, but applied sanctions in only one case, disregarding the other TV channels. “This institution’s lack of timely actions and efficiency did not contribute to ensuring free and fair elections,” the Coalition concludes.

The CFFE stated that, even in online press, “the biased, selective, and unbalanced nature of reflecting the election campaign was even more obvious.” “The results of monitoring ten news portals demonstrate that BECS was the election participant most frequently mentioned in a positive context, whereas PAS was most frequently mentioned in a negative context,” the report states.

International election monitoring missions have also criticized the BC before.

The Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections is an entity consisting of 36 public organizations from the Republic of Moldova aimed to contribute to developing democracy by promoting and conducting free and fair elections in accordance with the standards of the ODIHR (OSCE), the Council of Europe, and affiliated specialized institutions.

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