Reports
TELERADIO GAGAUZIA CONDEMNS LEGISLATURE’S DECISION TO DISSOLVE SUPERVISORY BOARD
Chisinau. The Teleradio-Gagauzia (TRG) public service broadcaster regards as unlawful the decision by the autonomous region’s Popular Assembly to dissolve the TRG Supervisory Board.
Company president Ekaterina Zhekova told a news conference in Infotag today that the Audiovisual Coordinating Council of the Republic of Moldova must react to that step. In her words, the company is being pressed by the Gagauzia authorities. Its journalists are strongly advised to avoid broadcasting acute, problematic stories depicting shortcomings in the power organs’ activities.
Zhekova stated that Gagauzia Bashkan (Governor) Mikhail Formuzal unfoundedly accuses the company of improper calculation of salaries and threatens he would start criminal proceedings, even though Zhekova has already requested the Popular Assembly to organize an audit of the company’s accounting.
She was particularly indignant over the fact that with all the notorious chronic under-funding of the TRG, the Gagauzia government is threatening the company budget is going to be reduced by one-half in 2009.
TRG Supervisory Board Mihai Daradur named the board dissolution decision “a new attempt to strangle democratic processes in the autonomy… The Supervisory Board perceives such statements by Popular Assembly deputies as a striving for imposing a stiff control and censorship on the regional television and radio, which may destabilize the socio-political situation in the autonomous region”.
The TRG administration stressed it reserved the right to seek justice in court.
The television and radio service of Gagauzia was founded in 1989. In October 2007, the company acquired the status of a public service broadcaster. Currently, it employs a staff of 52, a half of whom are creative workers – journalists, editors etc. Both the radio and television broadcast their own programs for 5-6 hours a day. News issues are presented in three languages – Gagauz, Romanian and Russian. The Supervisory Board was founded in the autumn of 2007. And the first attempt to dissolve the Board was undertaken by some Popular Assembly deputies on July 10, 2008.
