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Black Clouds above the BC: Prime Minister Maia Sandu has requested the BC Members to Resign

29 July 2019
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At the beginning of the public meeting on 29 July, the Prime Minister Maia Sandu came with a public request to BC members, urging them to resign. The Prime Minister justified her request by pointing to the BC members’ lack of any action to improve the state of the media.

Maia Sandu said that most of the BC members had neither counteracted the media manipulation, nor responded to the information about the non-transparent financing of some media institutions.

The BC members were surprised by this unannounced visit. The BC Chairman, Dragos Vicol, tried to explain the situation, but the Prime Minister replied that there was no need for explanations, but for actions from the BC members, which had not been taken in due time.

During the hearings held on 3 July 2019, the Parliamentary Committee for Mass-Media rejected the 2018 Broadcasting Council Activity Report and appraised the BC work as negative.

In addition, certain members of the Parliamentary Committee asked the current members of the BC to resign, since they allegedly allowed the Government’s capturing of the media. Six out of seven MPs attending the hearing voted for issuing a negative opinion on the report.

Chair of the Parliamentary Committee for Mass-Media, Adrian Lebedinschi, commented today, 29 July, the issue of the BC members resignation during the Media Azi talk show. According to Lebedinschi, the rejection of the BC report for 2018 by the Committee he leads was rather a political decision, adding that, previously, the BC was not so harsh with the press admitting violations.

During the talk show, Lebedinschi stated that the MPs would propose in the plenary of the Parliament that BC members resign in corpore, recognizing that there were no legal instruments and that he did not support amending the law in order to dismiss the BC members.

See also:
The Parliamentary Committee for Mass-media Rejected the 2018 BC Activity Report, and certain MPs Asked the Council’s Members to Resign in Corpore