ON MONDAY the Chief Returning Officer Lazaros Savvides reported three newspapers to the Attorney General for violating the provision of the election law for the publication of opinion polls. According to the law, no opinion poll could be published in the seven days before the election, which meant that nothing could be published after midnight last Saturday.
The three newspapers had published the findings of a poll commissioned by the CyBC and presented on a show on Saturday night, the following day, thus breaching the law. Weekly newspaper Kathimerini, which had commissioned its own poll, meanwhile, was put on the stands a day earlier, on Saturday evening, so that it would not be in violation of the law. Its readers would still have bought the paper on Sunday and read the poll findings less than seven days before the election but, technically speaking, Kathimerini had complied with the law.
This is what happens when there is an irrational and out-of-date provision in the law. Some disregard it, as the three newspapers had done, while others, like Kathimerini find ways round it. In reality, the Kathimerini poll was still made available only six days before the elections, as 95 per cent of the paper’s readers saw it on Sunday. As for the CyBC’s poll, it may have been released on Saturday night, but many of those interested could have seen it several days later.
The election law has another absurd provision that everyone disregards – the election campaign ends 48 hours before the vote. This means that news media cannot report anything other than hard facts about the election, such as the number of candidates, polling times and the number of voters per district. Reporting the election issues, the position of each party and the rows between candidates is a violation of the law because it constitutes campaigning. In short, tomorrow any medium mentioning the election issues would be in violation of the law.
Again, the law is completely ignored by media and the authorities do nothing about it, just as they will do nothing about the publication of the opinion polls last Sunday. Perhaps when the new legislature meets, it should amend the election law, taking out these absurd provisions that serve no rational purpose. Why should there be no campaigning and no opinion polls published on the eve of the election? Is it because it would affect voting patterns at the last minute? And if so, why is this such a bad thing?
The election campaign should last until polling, as is the case in most countries. Nobody would then be seen showing contempt for this absurdly pointless law, that nobody respects and nobody enforces.
