The Parliament Speaker, Ilir Meta, approved the procedures for electing
the new Director of the Audiovisual Media Authority (AMA), based on a
memo detailed by the Monitoring Service of Independent Institutions.
Based on the legal aspect of this issue, the Commission of Laws decided on February 14th that Endira Bushati is serving as director of AMA with a mandate that has expired on 24 September 2012.
What are the laws on which the Monitoring Service of Independent Institutions based this decision?
The memo says that Bushati’s mandate was based on the amended law 8410/1998 only for the period from 21 July 2011 to 24 September 2012. This mandate was given to her through Parliament decision no.113, dated 21 July 2011. The rest of her period on duty is illegal.
The memo says that Bushati is violating article nine of the above mentioned law, and has served on this duty for 18 months, without being a member of the former National Council of Radio Televisions. This is explained by the election chronology of the National Council of Radio and Television, which is now called AMA.
Ledio Binaku was elected in 2006 and his mandate expired on 28 July 2011. He was replaced by Mesila Doda, whose mandate ended in 28 July 2011. After Mesila Doda was elected as Member of the Albanian Parliament, she left the duty to be replaced by Endira Bushati, whose mandate, since she was replacing Mesila Dode, expired on 28 July 2011 as well.
The problem starts with Bushati’s second mandate. She cannot be reelected as a member, since this cannot happen in a time when Bushati’s member mandate has expired on 24 September 2012.
On 5 November 2009, Bushati replaced Artan Zeneli as member. His mandate expired on 24 September 2012, which means that Bushati is no more mandated to stay on duty after September 2012. Although she was reelected as Director of AMA, Bushati has kept this post illegally, because she had no mandate and was not elected by the Parliament.
The memo says that based on the above mentioned information, Bushati has served this duty against article 9 of law 8410/1998 without having a mandate as member of the National Council of Radio and Television. Article 9 says that the Parliament votes one of the Council members as director of the National Council of Radio and Television.
This law treats the member and director in equal positions, conditioning the legitimacy as Director with the position as member of the National Council of Radio and Television. This means that the calculation of the mandate of a director should not go beyond the expiration term as a member. The director should be selected within his mandate as a member, and should not take his position as director separately.
This has happened with Mr.Bushati, since one year after the expiration of the mandate she was elected directly as chairman with a second five-year mandate from the Parliament, which is not in favor and does not legitimize the new function beyond the term as a member.
Based on this legal explanation, the Parliament has invalidated the current position of Bushati as director of the AMA. Her post is considered vacant since 24 September 2012, ogether with three other vacancies for three members.
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