AGK Chairman: With KPM Law, Majority Aims for Discipline and Media Control

The Kosovo Assembly, without the presence of the opposition, has adopted the Law for the Prosecutorial Council and for the Independent Commission on Media.

In the PDK, they said these two laws would be submitted to the Constitutional, while even foreign ambassadors complained that their suggestions were not taken into account.

And the AGK board chairman, Xhemajl Rexha, estimates that what we have seen today in the Kosovo Assembly is a disaster and not a surprise, and that the KPM law has been among the three laws the European Union has been calling on magoranca not to vote because they do not meet European standards.

“We like AGK have long raised voices against the government's efforts to adopt the law in such form and have given our remarks, our suggestions that are public, but above all major organisations, the main international institutions have been joined together in sense that the European Union, the OSCE and the Council of Europe has brought to Kosovo a media expert who has seen the law, has spoken to all actors, and has come to the conclusion that the vast majority of this law does not meet European standards, does not meet the Council of Europe's standards, where Kosovo intends to be very quick, and calling the Government, where it has made a decision to bring it back to greater engagement and bring it back to its implementation.

But the indicators were such that the Government and the ruling party would not take into account the international remarks and we saw even locals taking us less seriously perhaps, and we saw that today they barely made the quorum, so even so many other times that sixty MPs are in the hall to vote on”, Rexha said on the Info Magazine show in Kosovo Clan.

He then added that the KPM law had to be done anyway and that it is actually delayed, but the way it was done and what was written in it and what this government wants to do is without question an attempt to discipline and control the media and that this is the goal of this majority.

“One of the main remarks of the Council of Europe's report is the new composition of the KPM and the competencies that will have the choice of KPM chairman, which would be done directly from the Parliament, and that there will therefore be room for maneuvering in terms of the impact that will come from the politics<.

There are actually seven members. The proposal is to become 11 members, and by the way Vetevendosje has been brought up so far, we understand that it will send obedient people to KPM who will go after critical media. The sentences amount to 400,000 euros, and also the fear is that they are unproportional and that may have the effect of closing an online media if implemented, because most of them are relatively small and few journalists, with fewer employees”.

But all the indicators this government has given with its behavior, the way it speaks to the media, the government of the prime minister, the MPs, led by Dimal Basha, who had called members of the KPM for their decisions, so they have already only done it by law, because in other forms, with public statements and charges, they have tried to extend this control, they already have the opportunity to do it unfortunately as well as”, Reja concluded.

The AGK's leader further stressed that they have seen the warning of at least two opposition parties that the law in question will send to the Constitutional Court.

“This is the rightest, best form, and we absolutely believe that the Constitutional Court will find many elements in which it will find that in the spirit the law is unconstitutional, so that it reduces the mediat plurality in Kosovo and we are willing to follow closely the entire process in the hope that it will really happen, as we have seen in many other cases, that the Constitutional Court has reversed the laws that this country has adopted and this Government, and we would very much hope to do the same for the KP-1-M>