PRAGUE, October 26 (Aalimi Nation) – Thousands of people gathered in Prague's Old Town Square on Sunday to protest a government bill that would scrap licence fees for public television and radio and fund the broadcasters directly from the state budget.
Protesters demanded that the legislation be withdrawn and accused the government of threatening press freedom. They chanted slogans including "We've had enough". Police restricted access to streets around the square. No official crowd count was released, and estimates of the turnout varied between several thousand and larger figures.
What the bill proposes
The bill, put forward by the coalition led by Prime Minister Andrej Babis, would abolish the household licence fees that pay for Czech Television and Czech Radio. Their funding would instead be allocated from the state budget. Accounts of the plan say it would reduce public media funding by about 15 per cent, possibly as early as next year, although reports differ on the exact size of the cut.
Coalition lawmakers pushed the proposal through a first vote in the lower house early on Saturday, October 24, after a debate that stretched overnight. The draft was approved at 4:36 am, a time protesters referred to in their chants. Opposition parties said the proposal was added to the agenda at short notice and handled in a way that broke established parliamentary practice. The bill now goes to committee scrutiny, and the upper house must also approve it before it can become law. The opposition has said it will challenge the measure before the constitutional court.
Competing positions
Organisers from the civic group Milion chvilek pro demokracii (A Million Moments for Democracy) called on the prime minister and his coalition partners to withdraw the bill and take part in a public discussion about the future of public service media.
Critics argue that financing the broadcasters directly from the budget would give the governing coalition greater leverage over their coverage. Some have compared the move with media policies in Hungary and Slovakia. The coalition includes two far-right parties.
Mr Babis has said the plan is not an attack on media independence. He has described it as a question of transparency in how the broadcasters are funded.
Next steps
Employees of the public broadcasters plan an all-day strike on November 3. The action is backed by labour unions, university rectors, churches and international media organisations, according to accounts of the protest. Organisers have also announced a larger rally at Letna park in Prague on November 15, two days before the anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution, which ended more than four decades of communist rule in what was then Czechoslovakia.
The government had not announced any change to the bill in the reports available on Monday. The public media strike and the November 15 rally are set to test how much public support the protest movement can sustain in the coming weeks.
