“I want to explain why I am convinced that these are politically aimed programs and are sent from 26 Baghramyan street – the presidential residency – and will do that by asking a question: why should these bills be discussed in an extraordinary session?” asked Yerevan Press Club expert, Mesrop Harutyunyan, during a press conference on Friday.
Let us recall that the National Assembly is discussing the amendments for the two bills on “Television and Radio” and “State Taxing" during the extraordinary session. In the first bill the authors propose prohibiting the Public Television/Radio Company to provide airtime on its frequency for other mass media. At present, Public Television and Radio decide whom to give airtime or to give it at all. Upon approval of this bill, Public Television and Radio is prohibited to provide airtime to other broadcasters. The amendments of the “State Taxing” law propose to the television/radio stations that have provided airtime to those broadcasts to pay a state tax 70 times the amount of the base tax; in other words, 70,000 drams for each time a program is aired. Since “Freedom” radio station is the only “other broadcaster” on Public Radio, whether we like it or not, we have to accept the fact that the bills are aimed to shut down “Freedom” radio.
“During extraordinary sessions we usually deal with bills that are essential to the public and are have a certain time limit,” says Harutyunyan. “I direct my question to those who initiated the extraordinary session – Robert Kocharyan and Serge Sargsyan. I am not directing it to Gevorg Danielyan, because he is only an executor. How essential, urgent and necessary were those issues for them to be included in the agenda of an extraordinary session?”
If the bills were discussed as part of the agenda of a regular session, they would have to go through all the stages; in other words, they would have to be discussed within the committees. In that case, corresponding representatives would possibly be invited for hearing opinions and that would definitely create a lot of noise. The extraordinary session doesn’t presuppose such processes.
“They include it in the agenda, discuss the issue, and then approve a resolution that the bill must pass within 24 hours after the second reading, and that’s how it is quickly approved,” says Harutyunyan. “Today’s parliament includes at least 94 button-pressers who absolutely don’t care about the essence of the issue and whose only preoccupation is to end it quickly and go and have a bite to eat with the boys. This urgency motivates me to say that this is a political decision aimed directly against the radio station. If this isn’t so, Tigran Torosyan should vote against the bill as he had said he would do.”
It should be noted that neither the television nor radio stations came to elucidate the Friday press conference condemning these two bills, and this served as a basis for the speakers to announce that the television stations were told by 26 Baghramyan street to not shed light on the discussion, just as bills were requested by 26 Baghramyan street to reach the National Assembly. This means that this address censures the electronic media. “Freedom” is the only radio station that is not under the control of the authorities.
“With these bills the authorities want to impede first and foremost the activity of “Freedom” radio,” announced Ashot Melikyan, president of the “Freedom of Speech Defense Committee”, on Friday. “I can compare this with the shut-down of “A1plus”, however, during our meetings, the top-ranking officials said several times that any bill referring to the information field would go through a long discussion before entering parliament, and it was, in particular, Davit Harutyunyan who made that kind of promise. These promises are not fulfilled and they are even neglecting the admonitions of OSCE representative on freedom of speech, Miklosh Harashti, to not approve the amendments.”
In fact, the government explains those amendments by the economic competition issues existing in the telecommunications field, claiming that foreign national editorials and other companies are working in unequal competitive conditions.
““Freedom” radio is not a company that sells advertisements that rapidly and doesn’t create obstacles for other radio stations,” says David Sandukhchyan, president of the “Internews” NGO. “The nature of “Freedom” strongly differs from that of the other radio stations; it is more of a news broadcast, and there is no competition issue. On the contrary, there is an issue on competition for the local channels and rebroadcast channels, for example, between “ORT”, “RTR”, “CNN”. The competitive field and the principle of equality are truly violated, as all of these companies are selling airtime. We have been raising this issue for the past five years, but we haven’t received feedback from either the government or the National Assembly, and if our authorities are concerned with the conditions for competition in the Armenian television market, I would advise them to pay direct attention to this issue.”
Our authorities have never cared about the rebroadcast channels because those channels have never caused them problems, and have rarely published materials on Armenia, while the news broadcast by “Freedom” has to do with domestic affairs and political events, and that is exactly what presents a danger for the authorities. While the discussion was going on Friday, at the same hour the National Assembly was discussing the bills and it became clear much later that the National Assembly had approved the amendments on the first reading with 79 “for”, 16 “against” and 7 “neutral”. Based on the National Assembly charter, the second reading of these bills must take place after 24 hours, meaning Saturday. If the parliament votes for the bills on that day as well, then the bills must be transferred to the president for ratification. In that case, the only hope will be for Robert Kocharyan to not ratify the bills and send them back to parliament. However, it would be naïve to think that Kocharyan would veto the bills. Kocharyan will ratify them, the bills will be effective ten days later, and “Freedom” will never broadcast again. So, Armenia will most probably become the next country after Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Belarus and Azerbaijan to put an end to the broadcast of “Freedom” radio station.