Albania

[AL] Parliament votes to complete the steering council of the public broadcaster

IRIS 2015-6:1/4

Ilda Londo

Albanian Media Institute

The Parliament elected five members of the Steering Council of the public broadcaster Radio Televizioni Shqiptar (RTSH) on 30 April 2015. A week later, on 8 May 2015, the Parliament also elected the new chair of the Steering Council. The Steering Council of RTSH was completed after disagreements and legal disputes between the opposition and Members of the Parliament representing the ruling majority.

The mandate of all members and chairmen of the Steering Council expired more than a year ago. However, due to parliamentary deadlock and other disputes, the opposition and ruling majority could not agree on the election process.

The Law stipulates that both sides should cooperate and ideally reach a consensus on the candidates to propose. Article 94 of the Law 97/2013 “On Audiovisual Media in the Republic of Albania” stipulates that the proposed candidates for the Audiovisual Media Authority (AMA) are shortlisted by the Parliamentary Commission on Media. For the selection of an alternate candidate for every position on the Steering Council of the Albanian Radio-Television (ART), the Commission for Education and Means of Public Information shall examine all candidacies put forward by the proposing entities. On the basis of the above-mentioned proposals, the administered candidatures shall be subject to exclusion one by one. In any case, the Commission shall keep a balance of five members supported by the majority and five members supported by the opposition. The candidacies should be submitted for vote in the Assembly's plenary session.

After repeated failures to reach an agreement, the ruling majority decided to proceed with electing the first five members on 4 December 2014. The shortlisting process before the Parliamentary Commission on Media was done only by Members of Parliament representing the ruling majority and the candidates were elected in a plenary session only with ruling majority votes. This cause the dissatisfaction of the opposition, which claimed that this process was illegal, as it was one-sided and lacking the participation of opposition Members of Parliament.

As a result, the Democratic Party, the main opposition party, filed a lawsuit before the first level of the Administrative Court on 12 January 2015, seeking to have the court repeal the decision and proclaim the whole process invalid. The Democratic Party claimed that the electoral process violated the law, since the opposition Members of Parliament had not participated in the shortlisting process, as the law required. The Court of Appeals ruled against the Democratic Party’s request. Afterwards, the Democratic Party decided to stop further pursuing the case and shortlisted five other candidates to be voted on for the completion of the Steering Council of RTSH.