Blago Markota will become new Acting Director General of Croatian Radio Television.
Parliamentary Committee on Information, Computerisation and the Media gave on Thursday its unanimous support to Blago Markota to become Acting Director General of Croatian Radio Television (HRT), reports Index.hr on November 10, 2016.
The Committee will submit its proposal to full Parliament, which will make the final decision. However, given the fact that Markota was praised by members of both ruling and opposition parties, it is expected that Parliament will accept the Committee’s proposal.
Markota is currently the head of HRT Archives and has been working for the public broadcaster for years, where he held various managerial positions, including Director of Croatian Television, adviser to Director General, and head of Marketing Division.
The proposal to appoint Markota as the acting director general is good, since he had been working at HRT for a long time and he has held a number of responsible positions without any serious complaints against him, said SDP’s Bojan Glavašević and Nenad Stazić. Stazić added that Markota will have SDP’s support for the time being, but they will monitor his work and also whether a permanent director general will be appoint in the next six months. Glavašević said he hoped that Markota will, despite being just a temporary director general, tackle a series of problems at HRT.
Markota was praised by HDZ’s Andro Krstulović Opara and Andrija Mikulić, who said that it was “absolutely the best proposal for the acting director general at this moment”. HDZ’s MPs agreed that the public competition for permanent director general should be announced as soon as possible.
Chairman of the Committee Jasen Mesić (HDZ) said that, since the term of former Acting Director Siniša Kovacić expired on 1 October, HRT had been in an “unexplained interregnum”. He added that Markota’s duty is to take care for the functioning of HRT, explaining that a lot depends on the existing legislative provisions which “provide a framework” for the public broadcaster activities.
Mesić also said that, in consultations with the Ministry of the Interior, he would organize a special session on the subject of threats to journalists. Representatives of journalists’ associations will be invited to the meeting as well. The Committee will also have to elect several members of the Programme Council of the Croatian Radio Television, discuss the issues related to the state-owned HINA news agency, and other issues which are connected with the media legislation, said the Chairman.
