Will Ethnic Minorities be on GPB Board of Trustees?

National minorities in Georgia request to have representatives of their communities on the Board of Trustees on Georgian Public Broadcasting (GPB).  They have already published a special appeal to the Georgian President and Chairperson of the Georgian Parliament in this regard. Parliamentary Speaker of Georgia Nino Burjanadze will soon discuss the final shortlist of out of a 235 list of nominees in consultations with the opposition. As it stands now, the board is to be staff by a parity principle between the government and the opposition, with each side providing 4 persons and one is to be agreed upon by both sides, for a total of 9 members. However, no special mention is made of the possibility of having minorities in the discussions to date.

“We think it is necessary to enable national minorities, compactly populated minorities included among them, to take part in the decision-making process in setting programming priorities, which includes editorial policy for Public TV. It is noteworthy that Public Broadcastering has already taken some steps in favor of minority communities (news programs are broadcast in five languages of local minorities on radio and in four languages on TV; they have prepared a talk-show “Italiuri Ezo,” etc).

When compared to previous years the situation has vastly improved but it is still not enough to guarantee complete civil integration and to provide the society with the information about ethnic minorities,” states the appeal which has been signed by 17 member-organizations of the Council for Ethnic Minorities within the Public Defender’s Office.

The council considers that in order to reflect the expectations, ideas and wishes of the national minorities in the media production of GPB is necessary and it should involve the representatives of ethnic communities in the decision-making of programming priorities.

“It is essential to select members of the Board of Governors with appropriate backgrounds. We think that members of the board of directors should be completely aware of the need for public integration and the problems facing national minorities. Consequently these people should simultaneously be representatives of various ethnic minorities,” states the appeal.

The Council of National Minorities recommends six candidates. They are: Gari Augst, Mikheil Aidinov, Zaur Khalilov, Tengiz Gagloev and Lali Moroshkina.

Supposedly, Georgian Parliament will affirm all nine members of the Board of Councils on February 26 2008. 235 applicants are participating in the competition for a seat on the Board of Trustees of Georgian Public Broadcasting.

Source: Media.ge