“Gagauziya Radio Televizionu” Regional Public Company has a new Management

On Friday, June 17, the Supervisory Board (SB) of the “Gagauziya Radio Televizionu” regional public company (GRT) elected, with 5 votes, Vladimir Cilcic as director of the company. Once he took office, he proposed candidates for new editors-in-chief: Ivanna Checsal was elected as editor-in-chief of television, and Galina Mareseva as editor-in-chief of radio. Thus, currently GRT has a full management.

According to the program with which the new director of GRT entered the contest organized by the SB, where he competed against other two candidates, Vadim Anastasov and Grigore Radov, he intends to increase the volume of content in the Gagauz language to 80% and to launch the website of television in the Gagauz language. He also believes that political interference of administration into the work of GRT is inadmissible.

Contacted by Media Azi, media expert Mihail Sirkeli, chairman of the “Piligrim-Demo” Youth Center, was not optimistic about this choice, believing that it is “a way to put television under control.” In his opinion, “now, television leadership is changing, and they appoint people who are comfortable for authorities. I believe that the People’s Assembly gave television up to the executive committee and promoted in the executive committee the interests of those who are in power,” Mihail Sirkeli said. Also, according to Sirkeli, “the lack of knowledge in the field of mass media is not quite a good indicator, even if the new director of the company has knowledge in economy, as the current legislation requires.” In conclusion, the expert underlined: “The first test that the new director will have to pass is related to elections for the People’s Assembly. We will monitor television very carefully to see how it covers this election campaign. It will clearly show who actually controls the region’s public broadcaster.”

We wanted to know what the company’s employees expect from the new management. Vitalie Gaidarji, one of them, said: “I expect little from any management, including this one, because we were categorically against the new law on television and radio, which doesn’t allow certain reforms to be implemented in the company. We don’t expect much, since over the past two years we already had 13 directors come and go.”

Vladimir Cilcic has a degree in economy from the Institute of International Relations in Chisinau (2008), and in 2011 he got a master’s degree at the Comrat State University. Among other jobs, he was a senior consultant at the Ministry of Economy and manager at the Moldtelecom state company.