Election commission rejects political ad classification for Benkunskas video

Lithuania’s Chief Electoral Commission, known as VRK, has ruled that a video conversation between Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas and influencer Rolandas Mackevičius was not political advertising, LRT reported.

The commission said there was insufficient evidence to classify the video as political advertising. It concluded that the mayor’s inclusion in the municipality’s communication channels was intended to draw residents’ attention to the municipality’s work, rather than promote the mayor as an individual.

“The video contains no elements of political campaigning, and it was not established that the politician influenced the initiation of the commission or the creation of the content,” VRK said.

The investigation was launched after reports were received between April and June about a video posted on Mackevičius’ Instagram account on April 7. The reports suggested that Benkunskas might have used municipal funds to increase his personal visibility and gain political advantage through a Vilnius municipality campaign publicising its work and projects.

The municipal administration told VRK that its cooperation with several influencers was part of the municipality’s “1000darbu.lt” publicity campaign. It said the creators had been free to choose how to present their ideas and had been encouraged to produce authentic content to reach as wide an audience as possible.

Mackevičius told VRK that he had made the creative decisions about the script himself and that including the mayor in the video had been his decision. Benkunskas said his participation was part of the campaign and that he had not been involved in approving the script or controlling the content.

VRK member Andrius Vaišnys initially proposed amending the draft decision to state that the content had characteristics of political advertising. He later withdrew the proposal, and the commission voted on the original draft.

VRK urged Vilnius’ municipal administration to follow its recommendations in future publicity campaigns to help prevent voters from being misled about the actual purpose of published information.