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Adoption of Law on Broadcasting Marked Political Assaults Towards Independent Media- Akaki Minashvili

June 3, 2013
 

Tata Kachkachishvili. Kutaisi

84 against 4- is the voting with which the Parliament of Georgia adopted May 31 the amendments to the Law on Broadcasting, which will come into effect after its publication. The amendments and additions to the Law on Broadcasting and its related draft bills were considered at the third hearing at the session of the Parliament, during which the discussion touched solely upon the subject of technical and editorial changes. Representative of the Parliamentary minority Akaki Minashvili believes that political assaults towards independent media had begun with the adoption of this law.

“Parallel to political persecution, assaults have as well begun towards independent media, aimed at the extermination of democratic institutes in the country,”-Minashvili stressed.

Another minority member Chiora Taktakishvili has also made statement before the adoption of the law, expressing her negative attitude towards it. According to her, that was a tight loop put around the neck of institutional independence with the purpose to finally choke it.

According to the statement of the Majority member Eliso Chapidze, the objective of the given law is to significantly increase the independence of both the GPB and Adjara TV of the Public Broadcaster.

“This is my first legislative proposition, and due to my having been a journalist during 17 years, I’d like to observe how democratically will the broadcasters function and how the law itself will secure such opportunity,”- Chapidze stressed.

According to the law, the membership of the GPB Board of Trustess decreases from 15 to 9 members. 2 of the board member will be named by the Public Defender, the Parliamentary majority will name another 3, yet another 3 members will be named by those outside the majority, and 1 will be selected with the introduction of the Supreme Council of Adjara. The candidates for the Supervisory Council will be selected by the Contest Committee of the Parliament. Then, in accordance with the aforementioned quotas, the candidates will be selected and introduced to the Parliament, which in turn will confirm each of the trustees by the majority of the list membership. In case the candidate presented cannot be selected by the majority, another candidate will then be presented to the Parliament within 10 days, and the one that gets more votes, but no less than 1/3 of the Parliament’s membership, will be selected for the Board’s membership.

The new membership of the GPB Board of Trustees will be fully replaced from January 1, 2014. Until then the current membership will be functioning. The members of the Board will be selected for 6 years.

Adjara TV-Radio Company is meant to be formed as defined by the Law on Broadcasting, which will later be established, as a legal person of the public law, under the name”, Adjara Public Broadcaster”.

Adjara Public Broadcaster will have the Board of Advisers, and will be funded by the 15% of the GPB budget. The amount of the GPB financing in turn increases and will amount to at least 0.14% of the GDP.

The Parliament has been discussing the amendments to the Law on Broadcasting since December 2012. The document as well implies implementation of the Must Carry standards and financial transparency of the broadcaster.

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