September 19: Communications Commission and Court Impose Unfair Fines on Critical Media
- On September 19, the Communications Commission issued an administrative offence statement for the second time in a week to the TV companies “Mtavari”, “Pirveli”, and “Formula” for failing to place “Georgian Dream’s” pre-election advertisement. According to the first statement, the court imposed on each of them fines of 5,000 GEL. The ruling party's pre-election campaign depicts representatives of non-governmental organisations, including the 2024 parliamentary election monitoring organisations, in an extremely unethical, unfair, and misleading context.
We believe that the pre-election video of “Georgian Dream” does not meet the requirements of the law, and that the Communications Commission's and the court's findings are unjustified, resulting in a significant financial blow to the critical media. The inclusion of non-governmental organisation representatives in the election video marks the continuation of the ruling party's campaign against local monitoring organisations and another attempt to to cause reputational damage to monitoring organisations.
