The European Parliament election campaign is being reduced to "political teleshopping" by the Broadcasting Authority that is imposing a five-minute time limit on partisan productions, according to Nationalist Party general secretary Paul Borg Olivier.
During previous election campaigns, time was allocated according to the number of candidates a party had and that party's results in the previous election.
The authority changed the established practice without explaining why or revealing the new criteria it was using, Dr Borg Olivier charged.
He insisted the authority had to make its criteria clear and added that, if it did not, it was breaching broadcasting law. It was duty-bound to fairly apportion facilities and time between different political parties in the weeks leading up to an election.
But now that the June MEP elections had arrived, the authority had scrapped these criteria without listing new ones, Dr Borg Olivier said.
The authority had transposed the five-minute time limit, previously imposed on political adverts, on to political programmes reducing them to "teleshopping".
It had also reduced the number of debates and this was detrimental to the public since, in a democratic society, these helped people understand who they should vote for.
The authority had "turned back the clock" and was not allowing parties to transmit their political message as they deemed fit, he added.
Meetings had been held between the various parties and the authority over the past months, and although the BA had eased its grip on the schedule, the PN was not satisfied with its restrictive proposals.
He said the authority was proposing to allocate the PN and the Labour Party a total of 80 minutes each - of which 60 minutes were for political productions and the remaining time for adverts.
As for the smaller parties, Alternattiva Demokratika was slotted a total of 32 minutes, Azzjoni Nazzjonali 14 minutes and Alleanza Liberal-Demokratika Malta six minutes.
When contacted, the authority said it would be reacting to Dr Borg Olivier's claims at a later stage.
On Sunday AD complained that the authority had refused it permission to broadcast a television programme on a private station explaining its EP electoral programme.
In a statement issued yesterday, the authority rebutted AD's claims saying it had immediately approved this request on condition that just one programme a week was broadcast, no political adverts were aired during that programme and it was balanced.
The authority denied trying to impinge restrictions or oblige AD to include representatives of other political parties for these programmes.
Just a few weeks ago, the authority issued a directive to the public broadcaster and private broadcasting stations obliging them to invite representatives from the four political parties (PN, PL, AD, AN) in matters of political controversy.
"Naturally, it is not expected that the smaller parties are granted equal broadcasting time as the larger parties," the authority said.