A group of media activists named on October 19 seven candidates for the vacant seats in the public broadcaster’s board of trustees and called on political parties to stand aside and to give civil society representatives more say in the pubic TV’s board to help “depoliticize” the broadcaster.

The group, known as Media Club, held a meeting, facilitated by Open Society Georgia Foundation, with few dozen of civil society representatives in an attempt to secure broader endorsement of their potential candidates, which are: a media researcher Nino Danelia; editor of bi-weekly magazine Liberali Shorena Shaverdashvili (both are also members of Media Club); Tamar Gurchiani of Young Lawyers’ Association of Georgia (GYLA); Tamar Kordzania of GYLA; Tamar Karosanidze, executive director of Transparency International Georgia and Iago Kachkachishvili, a pollster and a sociologist.

On September 22 Parliament approved increase of number of seats in the public broadcaster’s board from nine to fifteen; the ruling party said the move aimed at giving the opposition an opportunity to endorse their nominees in the board. Currently there are eight members in the board and all of them are viewed largely as loyal to the authorities.

At a meeting on October 13 Parliamentary Chairman, Davit Bakradze senior lawmakers from the parliamentary minority agreed that the latter would be able to name their favorable candidates. Parliamentary minority has yet to nominate their candidates.

At the meeting on October 19, media activists and civil society representatives were unanimous in their disapproval of the approach wherein political parties are eligible to nominate candidates.

But some skeptics at the meeting questioned the efficiency of the tactic applied by the Media Club itself.

“Under the current situation, when the board itself is powerless and has no say over the public broadcaster’s editorial policy, the focus should be made on granting the board more powers, rather than on joining the current board with its current powers,” Ramaz Sakvarelidze, a political commentator and a sociologist, told the Media Club members at the meeting. He also said that engaging in the process under the current condition would mean “playing under the authorities’ rules.”

Davit Bakradze, the parliamentary chairman, said on October 13 that working on a draft to increase the board’s powers would start soon.

Media activists said they also shared concerns about lack of board’s authority, but as Shorena Shaverdashvili put it the group had decided to be pro-active and to engage in the process.

Another concern voiced by some participants of the meeting was related with having no commitment from the parliamentary minority that they would support the candidates nominated by Media Club. Activists said they would further try to convince the political parties to be cooperative on the matter. “We have no illusion that the parties would agree, but we should at least try,” Ninia Kakabadze, a journalist and a member of Media Club, said.