The Parliament has started the procedures for replacing the Director of
the Audiovisual Media Authority (AMA) and for filling vacancies in this
institution.
But if AMA’s return to normality is being delayed for years, the opposition has chosen to boycott the process and by supporting the current Director. Endira Bushati, as results by the verification of the Commission of Laws, has been leading this institution without mandate for more than one year and a half, since her mandate has expired on September 24th, 2012.
While the previous Parliament has never undertaken the initiative to fill the vacancies, the current Parliament Speaker, Ilir Meta, has decided to start the procedures for filling the four vacancies.
But the Chairman of the Media Commission, Genc Pollo, has tried to turn this technical and legal procedure into a political issue.
“Two documents of the Monitoring Service of Independent Institutions – the first one on July 30th and the second one on October 14th, both after the elections – confirm that the leader of AMA and three members have full mandates, but on the same time there are three vacancies that need to be filled. The third document of March 12th 2014 reveals that AMA has not only three vacancies for the members, but even the post of the Director has been vacant for years”, Pollo declared.
“The only duty of Mr.Pollo in this moment is to bring the memo of Mr.Meta to the Commission, so that we can decide if there are vacancies, based on arguments. There is another method, which is the Constitutional Court. This is the only case when the opposition claims violations but they do not address it to the Constitutional Court, because they know that their case is lost. They know that Mrs.Bushati’s post has been vacant since September 2012”, declared the Vice Chairman of the Media Commission, Alfred Peza.
While the Chairman of the Media Commission claims that the majority is trying to take the post of the AMA Director, the vice chairman of this Commission underlines that they are simply implementing the law, and the criteria of the new law exclude political candidacies for the AMA members.
“The ‘Peza’ amendment aimed to take over AMA, going against the request for legal assistance sent to the European Union, the Council of Europe and the OSCE by the Parliament Speaker, Ilir Meta”, Pollo declared.
“The question is if Mrs.Bushati has a mandate for leading the AMA. Let’s study the documents and evidence. If we avoid legal confrontation with evidence, then we have a pure speculation”, Peza declared.
The Chairman of the Media and Education Commission, Genc Pollo, has also claimed that there is no consensus.
“Regardless of the good tradition and common sense; regardless of the clear and reiterated advise of the European Union for resolving the audiovisual issues through consensus between the government and the opposition, the Parliament Speaker is apparently ordering a falsification of facts by making his dependants to vote”, Pollo declared.
Peza explains that Pollo’s refusal to reach a consensus for choosing the Board of Directors for the Albanian Public Radio and Television, is another added evidence.
“They have decided that their political game, their agenda, is to make everything possible to not give consensus about anything, for as long that the candidate status has not been received yet. I want to remind you that one of the recommendations that Mr.Kukan offered in the Strasbourg meetings, was ‘regret for not reaching consensus in Parliament for the Public Radio and Television’, a consensus that was given by us but refused by our opponents”, Peza declared.
In the last meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee between Albania and the European Union, it was requested for Albania to fill the four vacancies at AMA, and the decision of the “Peza Amendment” to ask consults from the international community was greeted. But the stalemate of AMA, which is not being able to finalize even their basic duties, such as fight against piracy, has found another stalemate with Mr.Pollo. Mrs.Bushati has licensed a record-breaking number of cable TV operators, now saying that she is unable to control them. She has admitted her failure with the fight against TV piracy.
On the other hand, Mrs.Bushati not only has protected piracy with her incapability to act, but she has made piracy legal not only with cable TV operators in districts, but even in Tirana. The former Minister of Innovation, today Chairman of the Media Commission, Genc Pollo, has chosen to defend piracy when only a few months ago he faced power abuse charges at the Prosecution over an abusive tender for the digitalization of the Public Television, for which hundreds of thousands of Euros have been spent from the Albanian tax payers, and the tender was never realized.
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