Irakli Tripolski’s Open Letter to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe with Regard to Georgian Public Broadcaster

Interpresnews

Former chairman of the Board of Trustees at the GPB, chairman of the parliamentary committee of Regional Policy and Self-Governance Irakli Tripolski sent quite critical open letter to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, European Association of Broadcasters and international organizations.

Interpresnews published full text of the MP’s open letter on January 24 resolution of the PACE.

“Dear sir/madam. First of all, I would like to express my respect to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, its principles and activities. I am writing to you with regard to one concrete resolution, which the PACE adopted on January 24 and which causes our serious concern. Namely, the Resolution text reads that new government of Georgia replaced senior officials at the Public Broadcaster to implement political goals of the Georgian Dream. In fact, several days after elections, GPB stopped funding of the TV-Company PIK from which it used to purchase Russian programs. As a result, Company staff remained unemployed and they applied to the Chairmen of the Parliament of Georgia with the request to start investigation into the fact. Director General of the GPB Gia Chanturia applied to the Ministry of Finance and requested to restructure company’s debts. As we all learned, the TV-Company, which received 31.8 million lari from the state budget last year, had managed to accumulate debts of 11 million lari. Several years ago, President Saakashvili, who implemented protectoral policy towards the TV-Companies loyal to the government or owned by his allies, deducted 36 million lari debt from private TV-Companies and Public Broadcaster. More precisely, 9 million lari was deducted from the GPB and 25 million lari – from private TV-Companies - Rustavi 2 and Imedi. The same government fined and sequestered bank accounts of the opposition private TV-Company Kavkasia, which had only 2, 15 lari debt.

I have one question to you: can you name any example of similar approach of a senior official towards the expenditure of state funds from the latest history of Europe, which did not become a subject of investigation and criminal responsibility? Do you know any fact when governmental officials are not interested in the fate of TV-Company staff and funds transferred from the state budget not to blame them in making politically motivated decisions?

We are proud that Georgia is member of the Council of Europe and shares its normative acts and recommendations which were created in the field of freedom of expression for the last years. In the CoE recommendation of March, 2000 on the protection of information sources by the journalist, member states are suggested that checking information with several sources is one of the basic principles of reliability. Having adopted this recommendation, it is strange of such an influential organization to fail to check whether Parliament of Georgia had really passed legislative changes in the Law on Broadcasting. In fact, on December 28, 2012 journalists and nongovernmental organizations initiated a legislative proposal at the Parliament. We support the idea to start public debates on this proposal. Public debates are one of the main keystones of European democracy and publicity and it is incredible that the organization, which stands on this principle, prohibits Georgian society to start public discussions on the arrangement of Public Broadcaster which is funded from their income-taxes. Just the opposite, we think the GPB shall be eager to live-broadcast those debates.

Does the democratic institute, like CoE, justify the fact that President Saakashvili used to select every member of the GPB’s Board of Trustees and the parliamentary majority used to only formally approve those candidatures? Did a person with different opinion have chance to take part in this process? Because of these circumstances, Georgian society got astonished when GPB released information about the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights on Sandro Girgvliani’s murder case, that caused and still causes particularly high interest of the Georgian society, only 20 minutes after the news program had started and balance of synchronies was breached in favor of the governmental officials in the news story.

As for statements of the Georgian Prime-Minister about his desire to turn GPB into really interesting and public broadcasting company through assigning expensive equipment of the TV9, owned by his wife, to the GPB, they were wrongly understood by the society; particularly when precedent of similar action already existed in our country when Prime-Minister assigned his TV-Company to the government after they came in power after Rose Revolution.

I hope, you will be able to see clear difference between the activities of the previous government and our political team. I think, it is necessary to remind you that when adopting this resolution, you relied on the information provided by one political power which had closed several dozen newspapers and TV-Companies, arrested and misappropriated property of the TV-Company Europe, broke into TV-Company Imedi on November 7, 2007 and seized it from its owners, which physically assaulted several dozen journalists on May 26, 2011 and finally arrested innocent photo-reporters under charge of espionage. In 2005, that government created financial problems for printed media by refusing to subscribe newspapers for budget-funded agencies.

In 2008, I resigned from the position of the Chairman of the GPB’s Board of Trustees because it was impossible to make the GPB serve public interests due to acting law and board members. I am sorry that neither European Association of Independent Broadcasters nor other famous international organizations got interested in the reasons of my resignation then.

As a former chairman of the GPB’s Board of Trustees and Member of Parliament, I bear double responsibility to declare the following: if we do not want to have state TV-Company instead public one, we shall allow citizens, as well as GPB staff to express their opinion about Company’s future activities. We request to listen to them instead the leaders of the National Movement. Get involved into the development process of the GPB to assist Georgian society to believe that your purpose is to support democracy in the country and not one political team because nobody will ever assure Georgian citizens to trust them.

When working on the resolution, we suggest you to meet and listen to not only one party but all political powers, as well as media professionals from one particular country. It could have assisted you to avoid factual errors in the resolution text that is too awkward and unpleasant fact for the organization with high reputation,” Irakli Tripolski wrote.

PACE adopted resolution on Media Freedom in Europe where paragraphs 20 and 21 are dedicated to Georgia.

20. The Assembly regrets that governments in some member States have replaced senior staff in their public service broadcasters after a change in government in order to influence the political orientation of those broadcasters. In this regard, it is particularly alarming that the Georgian Prime Minister suggested merging the Georgian public service broadcaster with the private broadcaster TV9 owned by his wife and amending the Georgian law on broadcasting.

21. The Assembly expresses concern over a series of surprise financial inspections of the Georgian Public Broadcaster, followed by aggressive political statements by senior government officials in parallel with the introduction of controversial amendments to the Law on Broadcasting. These steps preceded statements by Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili on the desirability of the GPB's merger with TV9, owned by his wife, as well as of ownership shifts in the private Georgian media’, the Council of Europe Parliamentary assembly resolution says,” the resolution reads.