4.5 The Election Code of Conduct

The concept: the election-period's behavioural law — the fair-play rules for the campaign's actors, issued by the Election Commission (the statutory power), binding from the election's notification to the results' declaration. The covered actors-and-conducts: the political parties-and-candidates (the campaign's time-and-place limits; the spending's discipline; the posters-and-materials' restraint; the transport's use); the government-and-public-officials (the neutrality's duty; the transfers-and-appointments' freeze in the election's window; the public- resources' bar for the campaign; the new-programmes' suspension); the media (the paid-news discipline; the coverage's balance; the silence period); the civil servants-and-security (the duty's neutrality; the deployment's discipline); the observers (the conduct's rules); the social- media era's faces (the online campaign's discipline — the modern codes' additions). The enforcement: the Commission's monitoring (the code-violation cells); the sanctions' ladder (the warning → the campaign's curbs → the candidacy's faces; the officials' references; the serious violations' prosecution under the Offences Act).