Member organizations of the campaign It Affects You Too respond to the official statements released by the Ambassador Working Group, The Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum Georgian National Platform and the Coalition for Media Advocacy about the necessity to continue application of must carry and must offer regulations beyond the Elections Day, and the challenge of access to pluralistic information in the country. We believe that
• Enactment of Must Carry and Must offer regulations greatly contributed to equal access to pluralistic media; however, significant part of population has limited access to information;
• The Georgian authorities have not yet expressed their willingness to continue application of the must carry and must offer regulations beyond the Elections Day and corresponding mechanisms for extension of the term of the principles has not yet been created, which poses a serious threat to citizens’ access to information on and beyond the Elections Day;
• Impoundment of satellite antennas owned by various organizations, without sufficient and adequate legal grounds, must be viewed as curtailing public access t information, which contradicts public statements made by the authorities about their readiness to conduct fair elections in Georgia.
In view of the aforementioned, member organizations of the campaign It Affects You Too applied to the Georgian authorities, petitioning for
1. creating guarantees to extend application of the must carry and must offer regulations conversion to digital broadcasting
2. immediately revoking impoundment of satellite dishes owned by media, allowing distribution of satellite dishes and using due monitoring mechanisms instead of impounding
