SL political parties spend over Rs.1.5 bln on election campaign advertising-survey    

Political parties and candidates contesting tomorrow parliamentary poll in Sri Lanka have together spend over Rs.1.5 billion on campaign advertisements in print, electronic media and social media.
The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) has spent Rs.872 million becoming the highest spender for the party candidates exceeding the amount of Rs 416 million spent by Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), provisional cost estimates made by an independent election monitoring organisation revealed.
This report has been issued by this organisation after conducting a general cost analysis of political campaign advertisements which appeared in 30 newspapers, 9 electronic media institutions and social media during the period July 2 to 26.
During this period, 35 advertisements had been published in print media and 373 in electronic media by the SLPP while SJB has published 11 ads in print media and 307 in electronic media.
By contrast the UNP has spent Rs.219 million by publishing 18 advertisements in newspapers and 135 in electronic media while the Jathika Jana Balavegaya has published 1 ad in print media and 45 in electronic media spending Rs. 47.3 million.
The next in line was the Ape Jana Balawegaya led by Rathana Thero, spending Rs. 22 million and the TNA Rs 3 million.
However this expenditure is confined to a small cross section of the advertisements calculating an average of expenditure per day spent by political parties. Therefore the actual cost of election campaign advertisements could be much higher than this provisional estimate, the report highlighted.
In addition, a sum of US$318, 229 was spent for 20,496 election campaign advertisements appeared in Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, during the period of the first week of May to July 27.
The highest amount of $13,651 (Rs 2.54 million) had been spent by SJB leader Sajith Premadasa for his advertisements.
A Jaffna District Candidate was the second in line by spending $11,584 (Rs2.15 million) while UNP’s Kanishka Senanayake was third, spending $10,206 (Rs. 1.89 million).
Accordingly the SJB was the highest spender in the social media campaign.. (BS)