President Forced into TV Reform

President Kurmanbek Bakiev has agreed to transform Kyrgyz state television into a public broadcasting service, but NBCentralAsia observers say he did so only as a forced concession to the opposition, rather than out of any commitment to change things.



On March 26, Bakiev signed a decree to transform the State TV and Radio Company into a “national corporation”.



According to the decree, the corporation will have a director general and a supervisory board. The Kyrgyz president, parliament and civil society groups will each appoint five people to the 15-member board. The director general is elected by the board and approved by the prime minister.



Parliament has to appoint the corporation’s top management within a month.



At the same time, the president revoked a veto he issued in September on a June 2006 parliamentary bill that laid out the ground for creating a public service broadcaster.



Bakiev’s decree responds to one of the key demands made by critics of his administration.



However, NBCentralAsia observers say the move merely indicates that the president wants to enter into a dialogue with the opposition, and they warn that it is not certain that the state broadcaster will actually be reformed.



“Just because the state broadcasting company has been renamed the national broadcasting corporation, that doesn’t mean anything will actually change,” said Gulnara Iskakova, an expert at the Centre for Political and Legal Studies. “Also, one decree doesn’t mean our political leaders now want to embark on reforms.”



Media experts say the decree does not necessarily mean radical change to the national broadcaster is about to happen, or that the quality of its programmes will improve.



Media-watcher Shamaral Maichiev says a month is too short a time to set up a board of management, if the process is to be at all transparent. For instance, the public should be made aware of the procedure and deadline for appointing the civil-society members of the board.



“I don’t think the standards applicable to public service television should be introduced merely to satisfy transient political interests,” he commented.



Aleksandr Kulinsky, an independent TV journalist, is also unconvinced that editorial policy at the national broadcaster will change any time soon. It will take time and the input of skilled professionals to turn aroud an institution that is, in Kulinsky’s words, “a sick organism that won’t be cured overnight”.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)