Ismira Lutfia & Ronna Nirmala – Media advocates have called for the selection of a board of supervisors for state-owned broadcaster TVRI to be carried out anew, alleging the current process has become highly politicized.

Ahmad Faisol, a media activist and member of the Independent Coalition for the Democratization of Broadcasting (KIDP), said that the "over-politicization and backroom dealings" of the ongoing selection process could hamper the broadcaster's efforts toward greater transparency.

"We have never been informed about how far the selection process has gone," he said at a discussion on Thursday. "We only found out that the House of Representatives' Commission I carried out a fit-and-proper test of 15 candidates on May 30 and 31, but we haven't heard the results so far."

The coalition stressed that the lack of transparency and public participation in choosing the board of supervisors would compromise any effort to make TVRI a solid and impartial public broadcaster.

It also called on the candidates for the supervisory board to be fully aware of their responsibilities in overseeing TVRI's operations and to usher in new ideas and standards for the broadcaster that has largely come to be viewed as stodgy.

Tubagus Hasanuddin, deputy chairman of House Commission I, which usually oversees foreign and defense affairs, said the goal was to find replacements for five of the 15 members of the supervisory board.

He said the posts had been vacated after the commission recommended to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that the five members in question be dismissed following poor results in their performance evaluation.

Tubagus, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), added that there had also been mounting complaints that the five members had vested interests in serving on the board and were exceeding their assigned authority.

He said that of the 15 candidates vetted by the House last month, only three had been selected. The rest were considered to be unqualified for the position, either because they did not represent the public interest or because they were former employees of TVRI and hence ineligible to serve on the board.

Tubagus said he had asked the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to nominate another 15 candidates for a second round of vetting, from whom two would be selected to fill the final seats on the supervisory board. "TVRI should be a neutral, non-commercial and independent broadcaster with a dedication to serving the public," he said.

However, Paulus Widiyanto, a KIDP member and former legislator on the House oversight commission for information, said the broadcaster's stated values of being independent, neutral, non-commercial and performing a public service should also extend to the selection process for its board of supervisors. "The selection process for appointees to the TVRI supervisory board should ideally be open and transparent," he said.

By closing off the selection process from public scrutiny, he added, the House and the government were flouting the 2002 Broadcasting Law that stipulates the supervisory board must be representative of public interests as much as those of the government.

Paulus said that besides demanding that the selection process be repeated from scratch, the KIDP was also calling for a thorough audit into TVRI to ensure that it was free of any vested interests. "We expect House Commission I to push a proposal for an audit before TVRI receives any government funding for its operations in the future," he said.

Retno Intani Z.A., one of the current members of the TVRI supervisory board, blamed the closed selection process on a misunderstanding of the board's role in monitoring the broadcaster.

"All this time, the TVRI supervisory board has been seen as similar to a supervisory board at a public company," she said. "This is an erroneous interpretation, because the TVRI supervisory board bears more of a resemblance to the board of governors at state-owned broadcasters in other countries."

The issues with the supervisory board aside, Retno said another major problem afflicting the state broadcaster was the fact that it was not actually qualified to receive state funding.

She said both TVRI and state-owned radio station RRI were classified as public broadcasters, or LPP, but there were no provisions in the state budget for a budget allocation of LPPs.

"LPPs are not recognized under state finances, so we don't get a set allocation from the state budget," Retno said. "That's why we don't have a stable source of funding to support the construction of new infrastructure."

She added that the broadcaster's funding had long come from the Finance Ministry's emergency fund for disaster response.

Henry Subiakto, an adviser to the communications minister, agreed that the lack of fiscal recognition for LPPs was a long-running oversight that needed to be addressed by sourcing funding outside the state budget.

"The problem is that TVRI is completely reliant on funding from the state," he said. "But if it wants to be an independent public broadcaster, why don't we start thinking about a new system of funding through viewer license fees, like [Britain's] BBC or [Japan's] NHK?"

TVRI previously used the system of license fees, which are levied for every television set sold in the country, to fund its operations, but dropped the system at the onset of the reform era.

Henry said that reviving license fees should also go hand-in-hand with fixing the broadcaster's many failings.

"TVRI needs huge funding to adopt new technological developments that will support it in competing with private television stations," he said. "But we have to keep in mind that TVRI works in a completely different way... TVRI exists for the public, so it doesn't have to fight for ratings or advertisers."

He added that any improvement to the broadcaster's services and operations should start with a more transparent selection of its board of supervisors.

House Commission I is also looking to amend the 2002 Broadcasting Law to ensure fiscal clarity for both TVRI and RRI.

Gamari Sutrisno, a legislator from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), previously said "up to 50 percent of the law needs to be amended". "Both stations currently have no clear standing when it comes to funding, yet they need a reliable source of funding," he said.

He added that this could be done through merging TVRI and RRI. TVRI director Immas Sunarya said he was amenable to such a suggestion. "A merger would lead to greater efficiency for both institutions and would not be out of place in this era of media convergence," he said.

[Additional reporting from Antara.]