As indicated in the press release of the court, last week, on Thursday, it annulled certain points of the decision of the Central Election Commission (CEC) as unmotivated and unfounded.
The applicant I. Vēgėlė applied to the court, requesting to cancel as illegal and unfounded certain points of the decision of the CEC, which recognized that the Facebook accounts of the Christian Union and politician RJ Dagis and the publication of the portal “laikmetis.lt” are from 2024. May 12 I. Vēgėlė, a participant in the political campaign of the presidential election, has a hidden political advertisement.
I. Vēgėlė indicated that he believes that the above-mentioned information cannot be qualified as political advertising, since it meets the exception established in the Election Code, which is not considered political advertising.
In addition, the applicant emphasized that the published publication was illustrated with photos published publicly by the news agency BNS, and not with photos from a personal archive, the aforementioned publication was published on the initiative of the portal’s editors, the price of the publication in question was not determined during the investigation.
The court that examined the case, in the contested decision of the CEC, lacked the reasons on the basis of which RJ Dagios and the Christian Union’s 2023 November 29 and December 5 The Facebook posts (in which information is published about the start of the presidential candidate I. Vēgėlė’s election campaign – ELTA) were classified as political advertising, and the court also recognized as completely unmotivated and unfounded the point of the CEC’s decision, by which the publication of the portal “laikmetis.lt” was recognized as part of the presidential election political campaign participant I. Vēgėlė’s hidden political advertisement.
“The court missed the arguments why the exception established in the Election Code, which is not considered political advertising, was not applied when making the decision, and the CEC did not detail the content of hidden political advertising,” the court’s press release states.
Finally, the Administrative Court of Regions recognized the decision of the CEC as not meeting the requirements for an administrative decision, and therefore annulled it.
This court decision can be appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania.
2024-09-09 18:14:27