“But the majority of the board members realize what public radio and television are and all issues are solved by majority votes,” he added.

The law on public radio and television states that the national board will be a part-time organization representing public interests and will have 15 members; four of them are nominated by the President of Mongolia; seven of them are nominated by Parliament and the remaining four are proposed by the Government.

However not all members of MNB feel that the process of political appointees creates a fair representation of the public’s concerns.

“15 people cannot represent a country. It is too political…MNB Television should just stop now,” L. Ariunbat, Deputy Director of Mongolian National Public Radio and Television told MonInfo last week.

“They are all marionettes, puppets; that is why they can’t stand up for this organization.”

Today, the Honest Citizen Front submitted a petition to the Parliament of Mongolia and to Director General of NPRT concerning their requirements to appoint commissions and centers that are in other countries’ public radio and television structure in order to put actual and efficient control and to protect public interests.

“If I tell the truth, in reality there is no programming policy defined well for us. We have to use the public interest wants and needs as a base for the programming policy,” Naranbaatar said in an interview with MonInfo today.

“Besides my duty to develop this policy I am also working on changing the psychology of my colleagues. They need to reject what they used to do.”

NPRT still receives nearly 80 percent of its funding from the government of Mongolia in the form of US $4 million annually, officials said.

“NPRT law says the government will financially support NPRT. This could be an attempt to make this organization be dependent on the government,” Naranbaatar said.

The public radio and television law, implemented in April 2005, has determined objectives and a judicial base establishing public radio and television while defining programming policy and principles of activities.

Yet the system, which has been in place since 1967, is stronger than individuals who want to create a more public information and news network, said Ariunbat.

“They want to eliminate people who talk like me.”

(with additional reporting by Luke Distelhorst)