The Supervisory Board of the National Public TV and Radio Company of Ukraine has decided to dismiss Zurab Alasania from the post of Chairman of the Public Broadcasting Board. The main motivation for the dismissal they promise to publish in the upcoming week. How people comment on this situation on the network ‒ in the reactions from DUMKA.
Commenting on his removal, Zurab Alasania stressed that this issue was not on the agenda, and the reasons are still unknown. According to Alasania, all procedures were violated, and then, the judicial struggle is possible and even necessary, but it is worth waiting for the reasons to be made public. The suspended chairman of the Public Broadcasting Board urged his colleagues to continue working for the audience, no matter what.
Iryna Gerashchenko, first deputy chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, noted that touching the Public Broadcasting during the elections is a huge mistake. The author also considers the decision to remove Alasania as a mistake.
Journalist and publicist Larysa Voloshyna noted that what happened was not a signal, but… a volley with all the guns. In general, the author stressed that it seems as if this was all “the massacre of the servicemen against the one, who refused to serve”.
Journalist Dmytro Hnap called the dismissal of Alasania the introduction of censorship by the authorities before the elections. The next step, according to Hnap, could be the holding of massive fraud during the voting.
People’s Deputy Svitlana Zalishchuk called the promise to publish the protocol only after a week‒ absurd since the dismissal should be explained to the employer ‒ the society. Otherwise, the supervisory board leaves the ground to suspect that this, as Dmytro Hnap noted, is censorship during the election campaign. Zalishchuk demands to immediately name the reasons for dismissal and publish the results of the roll-call vote.
Andriy Sadovyi, the presidential candidate of Ukraine, is also convinced that the firing of Alasania is connected with the upcoming elections.
People’s Deputy Iryna Podolyak said that almost all political forces wanted to influence the channel’s editorial policy, but the journalists held out and tried to resist the pressure and systematic attacks of the supervisory board from the authorities and did everything to be useful to society. Zurab Alasania’s dismissal Podolyak relates with “party representatives in the supervisory board”. Apparently, it is a question of the party of the current President.
Journalist Natalie Sedletska assured that Zurab was inconvenient for the authorities of Public Broadcasting since he essentially defended freedom of speech on the channel. The journalist also added that dismissing the head of the only independent TV channel in Ukraine at the height of the election campaign is a big mistake and a very bad signal for the entire media environment.
MP Yehor Sobolev is sure that Alasania was fired because independent journalistic investigations, which in particular concerned the current authorities, also took place on a TV channel that was completely under the control of the state leadership. In other words, in the opinion of the politician, this is a dismissal for the fact that TV news were not sold.
Oleksandr Ravchev, a blogger and a public figure, noted that the main issue is not whether lawful or justified the dismissal of Alasania was, but that after a week no one would believe that it was lawful and justified. Now, according to the blogger, it looks like a political reprisal, and as long as there are no adequate arguments against, such an assessment of the situation will be fixed in the minds of people.
People’s Deputy and ex-journalist Mustafa Nayyem said that the dismissal of Alasania is in fact evidence that Public Broadcasting is under threat. In particular, the deputy writes that the decision on dismissal, most likely, was prepared in advance. At the same time, Nayyem sees two variants of the development of the situation: to pretend that nothing has happened, or to demand the widest possible explanation from the Supervisory Board, to apply to the court and demand to review this decision.
But the Deputy Volodymyr Ariev, noting that he is acting as a media provider, and not a politician, is convinced that if the programs of the public broadcaster had a public interest and resonance, one would be suspected of trying to seize control. In the meantime, according to Aryev, a great nothing has been done for hundreds of millions of people’s hryvnias.
A member of the supervisory board, Vyacheslav Kozak, confirmed that the vote on the dismissal of Alasania was his proposal. However, the project, proposed by Kozak had to be changed, since during a lively discussion of this issue at a meeting of the supervisory board, the colleagues of the author had a number of other questions for Zurab. So, it was the revised version of the project that was voted. Kozak published the first draft of the project and asked to wait for the release of the meeting minutes.
Another member of the supervisory board Tetyana Lebedeva noted that the lack of coverage of important events, involving the top officials of the state, was not the reason for this decision, despite the fact that some users of the network were convinced of the opposite. Lebedeva also published the full text of one of the draft decisions. This text, as well as the text of Vyacheslav Kozak, did not become a decision of the council. The final motivation for the termination of the contract with Alasania should be made public in the coming days.
Reactions were collected and official reasoning was waited by Stepan the Goat
