A new competition has been announced for the remaining five vacant seats in the Georgian Public Broadcaster’s board of trustees after the Parliament failed twice to fully compose new board since late December.

Georgian Parliamentary Chairman Davit Usupashvili announced the competition on March 11 with the deadline for submitting applications expiring on March 26.

Only four members in 9-seat board were elected by the Parliament as a result of two rounds of vote – first in late December and the second one on January 23. Lawmakers, mainly from the GD parliamentary majority group, rejected most of the 27 candidates vetted by an independent selection commission. The work of this selection commission, established by the Parliament itself and made up of media and civil society representatives, was widely hailed as transparent and professional and rejection of most of the candidates selected by this commission caused protest of many media and civil society groups.

Parliament speaker, Davit Usupashvili, said in a written statement on March 11 that in order to give “clear and unambiguous response to some of the groundless question and suspicion”, he will offer the Parliament to compose the selection commission with those same 9 members, who were part of the previous selection process.

Usupashvili said: “I am confident that we all will take into consideration the experience gained at the first stage of competition and will successfully finalize the formation of the public TV’s board.”