Anita Rachman – With jockeying for the 2014 legislative and presidential elections already under way, legislators are making the case for campaign advertising to be regulated to allow equal airtime for all parties.

Arif Wibowo, the chairman of the House of Representatives special committee deliberating amendments to the elections law, said more stringent regulation was necessary given that prominent media tycoons hold important positions in some parties.

Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie, a likely presidential candidate, controls news station tvOne, general broadcaster ANTV and news Web site Viva News.

The fledgling National Democrat Party (NasDem) boasts among its senior members Surya Paloh, who owns news station Metro TV and the Media Indonesia broadsheet, and Hary Tanoesoedibjo, who owns three national broadcasters, a broadsheet and several news and entertainment Web portals.

Arif said the idea behind the House's proposal was that during campaigning, all parties should have equal opportunity to run campaign ads in the media, including through channels owned by members of rival parties.

"For instance, each political party could get a [TV] slot once a week or four times a month," he said on Thursday. "We have invited several chief editors from the print media and news television to ask for their opinions and suggestions, because I think we need to regulate political campaign advertising."

Arif, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said that besides equal and fair treatment for campaign ads from all political parties, he hoped the media could also give discount prices to the parties.

This, he posited, would lower the overall cost of the elections. "[The elections] are a national event, so we hope to get a 'national' price," he said, referring to discounted advertising rates.

However, the planned meeting with the editors, scheduled for Thursday morning, fell through when none of the legislators from the special committee showed up on time. The editors, many of whom arrived before the 9 a.m. scheduled start time, left an hour later with no legislators from the committee having yet arrived.

Heddy Lukito, the chief editor of news magazine Gatra, told the Jakarta Globe that the idea of giving the same amount of campaign airtime to all the parties could be positive. However, he said the House should take the proposal directly to the parties first.

He added that it would be better for the House to institute a cap on campaign budgets, rather than tell the media when and how they should carry campaign ads. "If we suffer financial losses, will the House bear the costs?" he asked.

Heddy rejected the notion that the advertisements would affect newsroom and editorial policy, pointing out that the editorial and advertising departments of news organizations were two distinct departments with no interference in each other's work. "And there's a firewall between the two," he said.

Budiman Tanuredjo, managing editor at Kompas, the country's biggest-circulation newspaper, agreed that the House's proposal to regulate the details of permissible campaign advertising could verge on interference in the media's operations. Kompas, he pointed out, had always been very open on this matter, allowing all parties the same opportunity to advertise in the paper.

Ignatius Haryanto, director of the Institute for Press and Development Studies (LSPP), said the House did not need to worry about campaign advertising, arguing that ads were unlikely to be effective anyway.

Rather than tell the media how they should carry an advertisement, Ignatius said, the House and public in general should urge the media to provide fair and informative coverage of polling issues.