The journalists of ERT reply to the government's disruptive intentions
Friday, 02/08/2013
The government is intensifying its effort to break up the employees of ERT. After giving a 24-hour prolongation to submit applications for the 289 jobs it had proclaimed (what, we wonder, was the necessity of the prolongation?...), it published the proclamation of 1,453 more jobs, giving a deadline until the 9th of August, for a new round of blackmailing against the ERT employees.
We shall not stop so much at the ruination of all Regional radio and television stations of ERT, that derives from the “final” planning of Gikas Manalis and the Ministry of Finance, to conclude the hiring procedure for “seasonal” staff with a two-month employment contract.
For the moment, we shall only stop at the last sentence of the new proclamation, which proves the government’s real intentions: “The hiring of personnel will be gradual, according to the occurring needs and as soon as the use of the Buildings at Agia Paraskevi and Salonika becomes free.”
Obviously, that was why the symbolic number of 1,453* jobs was chosen, with which the government believes it will open the ERT “Kerkoporta”* (weak spot).
The “transitional broadcaster” is a legally nonexistent construction. ERT remains the he only true public radio-television, whose employees continue producing a full radio-television, internet and cultural programme, in Athens, in Salonika and in its 19 Regional Stations.
ERT journalists
*1453 A.D. was the year Constantinople (since then, Istanbul) fell to the Turks. According to history, the Turkish army, after siege and battles, entered the city from a small, neglected gate at the protective city walls. That gate is known as “Kerkoporta”.