The supervisory board of Ukraine’s Suspilne Telebachennya (Public Television) on Jan. 31 fired Zurab Alasania as the CEO of the channel. The decision arrived exactly two months before the presidential election in March, evoking fears of censorship at the state-funded station.
Suspilne Telebachennya, also known as UA.Pershy, was launched in 2015 to replace the state-owned Pershy Natsionalny (First National) channel. Suspilne was intended as Ukraine’s equivalent of BBC – a public broadcaster independent from the government. Thanks to its wide network, Suspilne is available in 93 percent of Ukrainian households, topping any private channel.
Alasania has been the CEO of the TV station since 2014, even before it was rebranded as Suspilne. His current contract was due to expire in 2021.
The vote on Alasania’s dismissal was held secretly, and no specific reasons for the decision were announced. Nine members of the board supported his firing, and three voted against it, Svitlana Ostapa, a deputy head of the board, wrote on Facebook.
“The authorities’ allergy to Suspilne has reached the stage of intoxication,” Alasania wrote on Facebook.
“The reasons are unclear to me, and there are no official grounds (for the dismissal), although they promise to give them within a week. This was not unexpected – they’ve tried (to fire me) for a long time but they did it in such an in-your-face manner before the election… and this is imprudent.”
He said that the issue of his dismissal had not been included into the agenda beforehand, and all procedures had been violated. Alasania added that he would appeal the decision in court after the reasons are stated.
“What happened with Suspilne today resembles the sack of Rome by barbarians. Sometime we’ll have an age of discovery, a Renaissance and European Union membership. But so far we have the ashes of a reform hugely important for society, and its future is very dubious,” Yevhen Hlibovytsky, a member of Suspilne’s board, wrote on Facebook in a reference to the public broadcasting reform.
Ostapa told the Glavkom news site that the contract with Alasania had been terminated ahead of schedule because he had allegedly violated it.
She did not elaborate on the alleged violations but said that the minutes of the supervisory board’s meeting, including reasons for Alasania’s dismissal, would be published within five days.
Ostapa claimed that Alasania’s dismissal was not linked to censorship. She told the Kyiv Post, however, that she did not rule out that his successor could turn out to be less independent.
Ostapa, who voted against Alasania’s firing, added that previous complaints against Alasania were related to professional issues and the channel’s low ratings. Another complaint is that Suspilne has failed to become a political channel in an apparent effort to avoid accusations of bias in favor of President Petro Poroshenko or other politicians, she added.
The vote on Alasania’s dismissal was initiated by Vyacheslav Kozak, who was delegated to the supervisory board by populist Oleh Lyashko’s Radical Party.
“There have been long-running conflicts between (Alasania and) several members of the supervisory board,” Vadym Miskyi, the board’s secretary, told the Kyiv Post. “Proposals to terminate the contract (with Alasania) have been made for half a year – long before the election campaign started. Today this just detonated.”
Ihor Roskladay, a lawyer at the Center for Democracy and the Rule of Law, said on Facebook that Alasania’s dismissal appeared to be “null and void” and should be immediately appealed.
“This is somewhat surprising,” Denys Bihus, head of the Nashi Hroshi, a show investigating corruption that airs on Suspilne, told the Kyiv Post. “All circumstances of the dismissal look bizarre, to put it mildly.”
He said that the dismissal could have political reasons.
“Two months before the (March 31 presidential) election this is a very sudden decision,” Bihus added.
A source at the management of Suspilne who was not authorized to speak to the press also said the decision could be linked to the elections and could be due to Suspilne’s conflict with top politicians.
“This is undoubtedly the introduction of censorship before the elections,” politician and former investigative journalist Dmytro Gnap claimed in a Facebook post. “Apparently the next step will be large-scale vote rigging during the election.
Until 2018 Gnap was the head of the Slidstvo.info investigative team, which had a weekly show on Suspilne.
Suspilne has been an inconvenient channel for the authorities due to major investigative shows exposing top officials’ corruption – Schemes, Nashi Hroshi and Slidtsvo.info.
“Zurab Alasania as the CEO of Suspilne Television is inconvenient for the authorities,” Natalie Sedletska, chief editor of Schemes, an investigative unit of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, said on Facebook. “He has defended the freedom of speech on the channel as a matter of principle. People like him have an allergy to censorship.”
She said the latest episode of pressure on Schemes started in December after the Schemes aired an investigation into meetings between Poroshenko and pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk.
“However, Zurab (Alasania) extended the contract with us for 2019,” she said. “Today Zurab himself was fired.”
In December Sedletska said that her sources warned her that Suspilne’s supervisory board was about to consider stopping the broadcasting of Schemes and Nashi Hroshi. She attributed this to the Presidential Administration’s dissatisfaction with their coverage ahead of the presidential election.
Nashi Hroshi and Schemes released many big investigations of top officials, often involving Poroshenko or his inner circle. In January 2018, Schemes revealed Poroshenko’s luxurious Maldives vacation.
In September the broadcasting of UA.Pershy (Suspilne) was terminated officially due to its debt to the government. Alasania accused the authorities of sabotaging his channel because they wanted only positive coverage of the government.
Meanwhile, in July Tetiana Terekhova’s Good Morning, Country show was closed after an interview with Yulia Tymoshenko, one of President Petro Poroshenko’s main competitors in the presidential race. Terekhova accused the channel of censorship, while Suspilne accused her of violating professional standards.
