Public Company “Gagauziya Radio Televizionu” could be liquidated

The Supervisory Board (SB) of “Gagauziya Radio Televizionu” (GRT) voted, on January 11, 2016, with 5 votes out of the 8 members present at the meeting, an address to the head of the autonomy and to the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia, in which they proposed modification of the law on radio and television of Gagauzia and “provisional liquidation” of the public company “Gagauziya Radio Televizionu.” Media expert Petru Macovei says that the initiative of the SB in Comrat defies national legislation. In his turn, Dinu Ciocan, head of the Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC), says: “If an illegality took place, we will challenge it in court.”

In an open letter, the SB from Comrat mentions: “The Supervisory Board suggests to the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia suspension of Article VI of the Law on the radio and television of Gagauzia and, therefore, provisional liquidation of GRT (along with discharge of all employees)…”

Contacted by Media Azi, SB vice-chairman Nicolai Tucan told us the following: “We are not yet speaking about the liquidation of the company. It is not a final decision. We sent a proposal to the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia, in which we are asking to modify the law on television, because we find that current provisions are not in tune with the activity of the Supervisory Board. (…) We haven’t discussed about it with the BCC, because we have to first clarify things here, with our law.”

Ana Harlamenco, the company’s president, believes that this initiative seeks to replace current employees with submissive persons, who will execute exactly the orders of the autonomy’s authorities. “The liquidation of GRT is a political order. As soon as representatives of regional authorities or People’s Assembly of Gagauzia got involved into the SB, they started making decisions that are harmful for the company,” Harlamenco said.

We also asked for the opinion of BCC chairman Dinu Ciocan, who recognized that “we don’t really have access to information so as to know what happens there”: “Unfortunately, I don’t know the problem, but we learned about it from the media. We will ask for information from the company’s president and from the Supervisory Board, so as to later see what was at the basis of this decision and why it was made and then we will decide how to act. If an illegality occurred, we will challenge it in court; therefore, we will address all competent bodies, including the specialized parliamentary commission.” According to Dinu Ciocan, “it is clear that they want to seize the public broadcaster, either to capture or to destroy it, according to the information we have, so that later all the media would obey local authorities.”

Media expert Petru Macovei qualified the situation as “scandalous”: “At stake there clearly are some private and political interests of some persons from the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia, who want to have in the staff of GRT an instrument for manipulation of information, as they did for very many years. But the company’s position has recently been slightly different than the one of some members of the regional parliament in Comrat.” According to the expert, “this initiative is definitely a violation of the Broadcasting Code of the Republic of Moldova, according to which there is a national and regional public broadcaster” and “the State Chancellery needs to urgently intervene in order to challenge it in court.” At the same time, in his opinion, “the BCC needs to be proactive” and prove that it is a guarantor of public interest in broadcasting