Former interim Parliament president and long-time conservative political cadre Vyron Polydoras is the leftist government’s surprise choice for president of a national radio-television council that oversees – under the constitution – the broadcast sector.
The announcement comes days after a majority of Council of State (CoS) judges shot down a controversial law transferring jurisdiction of the television broadcast sector from the independent authority to the ministry of state – essentially shifting responsibility from a watchdog entity to the government at any given time.
The ruling, 14 to 11, served as a major domestic policy defeat for the Tsipras government and specifically for Minister of State Nikos Pappas, the architect and chief proponent of the bill.
Nevertheless, the government’s bid to both surprise and “outflank” the main opposition New Democracy party appears to have backfired, given that ND immediately said the Polydoras candidacy was inadequate. Smaller opposition parties in Parliament also expressed their direct opposition.
Fourth-fifths of Parliament’s deputies (300 MPs) are needed to ratify nominations for the Greek National Council for Radio and Television (NCRTV), as the independent administrative authority is called.
Failure to do so over the past year and a half, following the end of previous board members’ tenure, caused the government to submit the legislation taking away its jurisdiction. The bill later passed Parliament on the votes of the deputies of the two parties comprising the current hard left-populist right coalition, namely, 153 MPs out of 300.
The fact that NCRTV’s role and jurisdiction are clearly described in the Greek constitution was the basis for the CoS ruling.
