The competition for the selection of members of the Board of Trustees of the Public Broadcaster is taking place with procedural violations. The selection commission nominated eight candidates for three vacant positions to the Parliament, whereas, according to the Rules of Procedure [1] of the Parliament, the commission was supposed to nominate “at least three times as the number of candidates needed to be selected”, or, in this case, nine candidates.

The competition announced by the Parliament aims to select three new members of the Board of Trustees. The three positions became vacant after the powers of three former members of the board, namely  Gia Iakobashvili, Ketevan Mskhiladze, and Ninia Kakabadze expired [2].

Therefore, the quotas of the trustees are distributed in the following way: one member is to be selected from nominees by the parliamentary Majority and two members are to be selected by MPs not belonging to the Majority. The candidates selected by them are then supposed to be approved by a vote of the Parliament. Nine candidates in total took part at the stage of interviews of the competition, while only eight of them [2] actually showed up for the interviews. Despite the insufficient number of candidates, the selection commission submitted a list of the eight individuals to the Parliament. Today, on June 29, the Parliament is going to put the issue of election [3] of the trustees [3] to a vote.

According to the Rules of Procedure of the Parliament, the Chair of the Parliament is to issue an order on the announcement of the competition for the selection of members of the Board of Trustees, while the Parliament is to supposed to approve the composition of the selection commission and, also, to adopt the final decision on the election of members of the Board of Trustees from the candidates nominated by the commission in accordance with the quotas determined by law.  

In the existing situation, we call upon the Parliament to stop the selection of members of the Board of Trustees and to bring the process of the competition in conformity with the law.