KHUJAND, February 15, 2010, Asia-Plus — Leaders of the organization of the Social-Democratic Party (SDPT) for Sughd say they are satisfied with the level of access to local state-run newspapers for publishing they party’s pre-election program, Ms. Dilbar Samadova, chairperson of the SDPT organization for Sughd, said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
According to her, attitude of local authorities to the SDPT has changed for better. “On February 6, the Russian-language official newspaper of the Sughd regional administration,
Sogdiyskaya Pravda
, published our pre-election platform free of charge without any problems,” said Ms. Samadova, “The newspaper’s leadership has agreed to publish our materials in the future as well but on a paid basis”
She noted that two other official newspapers of local authorities – the Tajik-language
Haqiqati Sughd
and the Uzbek-language
Sughd Haqiqati
– had also agreed to publish the SDPT’s pre-election platform.
“As I was told in one of editorial boards, they have received an order from above not to infringe upon rights of any political party,” said Samadova, “The regional television’s attitude was also benevolent. During the 2005 parliamentary elections, local media’s attitude to us was negative.”
We will recall that Article 39 of the election law obliges state-run national and local broadcast media to allocate airtime free of charge throughout the campaign period on equal conditions to registered parties (30 minutes) and for candidates in single-mandate constituencies (15 minutes). Based on the decision of the Central Commission for Elections and Referenda (CCER) of December 28, 2009, the Committee for TV and Radio-broadcasting has to ensure compliance with this provision. The same CCER decision grants each party and each candidate eight A4 pages in state-run newspapers free of charge.
