Government denies muzzling PN with legal notice banning political billboards

The Government has denied that its legal notice to ban political billboards is an attempt to muzzle the Nationalist Party and stifle their message.

In a statement issued in reaction to a PN press conference on the issue yesterday, the government insisted that the PN’s claims that the government was trying to stop it from spreading its message is “false”.

In a press conference yesterday, deputy leader for party affairs Beppe Fenech Adami, said that the PN had filed a prohibitory injunction in a bid to overturn a legal notice because they felt that the legal notice was going against the right to freedom of expression after the term ‘Political Advertisement’ – in the legal notice – was redefined to ensure that political billboards may only be allowed from the time when an election is announced.

Fenech Adami added that under the new legal notice, keeping billboards would be increasingly difficult due to the fees it imposes.

“If the party were to keep its current 20 billboards, it would need to pay a license fee of over €30,000 a year,” he said, adding that the notice stipulates that parties wishing to put up billboards outside the three month time span ahead of elections or referenda, would have to pay a licence of €1,500 per billboard, just like commercial billboards.

“The legal notice effectively muzzles the opposition and it removes the level playing field,” Fenech Adami said, adding that the fees make it difficult for political parties to afford putting up billboards and putting their message across.

In its statement the government defended the legal notice, and said that it was aimed at regularizing the current situation, with billboards not conforming to the law and marring the environment.

“It is in no way aimed at political parties as long as their billboards are set up in accordance to the law,” the statement reads.

The government added that the legal notice was not aimed just at political billboards and that it would also affect whichever party was in government should their billboards not conform to the law.

Taking exception to the PN’s claims of injustice about the money to be spent for political billboards, the government added that the party could continue to spread its message as long as it conformed to the legal notice.

In response to the PN’s claims that the legal notice was a “panicked reaction” to the allegations being made against the government due to the Panama Papers leaks, the government said that the notice had been a long time in the making and that it had started being discussed under the former planning parliamentary secretary, Michael Falzon.