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According to Petru Macovei, API director, 'the selection of the Radio-Moldova and TRM management was flawed because the members of the Board of Observers did not apply clear evaluation criteria when assessing the contenders and their files. Because of this, the selection made by the Board of Observers raised a number of questions and controversial discussion about the quality of the winner's project of intention and the accuracy of the data in her CV,’ said Petru Macovei.
Nadine Gogu, IJC Director, talked about the package of documents that the applicants to the position of Chairman of Teleradio-Moldova had to submit, in line with the provisions of the regulation on conducting recruitment. According to the expert, the requirements have a rather general character (the applicants must have a higher education degree, be a citizen of Moldova, and speak the state language); even the most specific requirements are quite general – 'to be professional in running public broadcasting companies and have managerial experience'). The requirements regarding the project of intention for the management / development of Teleradio-Moldova during 2015-2020 also lacked specific benchmarks.
In this context, Nadine Gogu also commented on the need to establish a clear mechanism of assessment of the application files that should include three stages, namely (1) assessment of the projects of intention, (2) assessment of the CVs and (3) the interviews as such. 'If the application file does not get a certain number of points, there is no point in inviting the applicant to the interview. There should be an assessment grid with specific requirements for meeting which the applicants would get points. Some of the requirements we suggest are: the structure of the project of intention, the relevance of the proposals, concreteness, complexity or depth, and feasibility,' said the expert. She added that only through clear requirements can help one to conclude whether the applicant displays analytical thinking, has a development strategy and knows how he is going to implement it. Specific requirements concerning the CVs are needed as well, as they would allow for assessing the CVs.
Ion Bunduchi, APEL Chairman, presented the results of the independent assessment carried out by media NGOs based on the CVs of the applicants and their projects of intention. The expert specified that the goal of the assessment was to identify 'whether the applicants met the minimum requirements for the position they sought'. Thus, the most basic review of the files submitted by the applicants for the position of Chairman of Teleradio-Moldova showed that Ion Terguta performed the best (54 points) and Olga Bordeianu performed the worst (21 points).
Ion Bunduchi also reminded that media NGOs have urged the Parliamentary Committee for Media, the Coordinating Council for Broadcasting and the Board of Observers repeatedly to conduct the tenders in a fair and transparent manner, so that anyone interested understands how one applicant or another was selected and appointed. He noted that media NGOs had expected a response from the Parliamentary Committee for Media and from the Coordinating Council for Broadcasting after publishing the Declaration of the media NGOs about the tender conducted by the Board of Observers on June 4, but the Committee had not responded. 'There only was a response of the Board of Observers: they claimed that there were no reasons for the five members, who had voted for the winner, to resign, although the civil society claimed that she did not meet all requirements,' concluded Ion Bunduchi.
The media NGOs also drew attention to the performance of the members of the Board of Observers. 'Even this basic assessment conducted in good faith, using internationally accepted criteria, shows that the Board of Observers have selected the weakest candidate for the position of Chairman of Teleradio-Moldova. The fact that Olga Bordeianu had made discriminatory statements regarding the Roma community, claimed to have graduated from the US Film Academy, and some members of the Board of Observers were under the impression that she had even participated in movie production in the US and collaborated with TV channels in various countries – all show that the members of the Board of Observers had a formalistic approach towards their tasks,' concluded Petru Macovei. According to the API Director, the tender conducted on June 4 showed that the members of the Board of Observers came to the meeting unprepared. 'The questions they addressed to the applicants, in particular to Olga Bordeianu, who was selected as the best candidate (while, in our opinion, her file was the worst), reveals that the members of the Board of Observers had not bothered to learn more about the applicant who was to be entrusted with the most important management position.'
The API Director also added that, intentionally or not, Olga Bordeianu hinted that she was highly appreciated and in great demand in Russia, Kazakhstan and other countries, and the members of the Board of Observers asked for no further explanation to fully inform themselves about the quality of the application file. 'One of the members of the Board of Observers admitted frankly that he did not know who on earth Olga Bordeianu was; he admitted that he had tried to learn more about her from social networks and from online sources, which raises questions about the quality of the candidate from the very start,' said Petru Macovei, stressing that 'a two-week training in Moscow does not equal to years of college at a university in the USA'. According to the expert, all these show that 'Olga Bordeianu should be disqualified and the results of the tender should be canceled'.
In turn, Nadine Gogu thinks that what has happened so far raises serious doubts about the competence of the members of the Board of Observers and makes one think that there might be 'political interference in the work of the Board of Observers'.
The media experts have expressed willingness to support the Board of Observers in developing clear criteria for assessing the files of the applicants to public positions, as the lack thereof compromise the very idea of recruitment tenders.
It should be noted that on the same day the Chair of the Board of Observers, Ludmila Vasilache, stated for Radio Moldova Actualitati that the request of the media organizations to cancel the results of the tender conducted on June 4 and 5 would be discussed at the subsequent meeting of the Board of Observers scheduled for the June 30, when the members of the Board of Observers are expected to take a decision regarding Olga Bordeianu.
