Pro-Russian and homophobic Alt-Info channel stops broadcasting after its members showed poor results in the elections. The two faces of the channel are sanctioned by the US Treasury Department.
“This loss is very heavy for us, very serious blow for us, because we did not expect this result and we did everything to avoid this result,” said Shota Martinenko, one of the presenters of the channel. Martinenko said that the channel was working in the hope of the election results. “A number of people were working without pay,” he added.
“Our television will not be able to continue working in this format for the very simple reasons that, you know, our television […] lived on the donations and funds of our viewers,” said Giorgi Kardava, another presenter, adding, “We don’t have a ready answer as to how we will return to the viewers and continue the political and informational fight.” He also said that the channel’s focus was on the elections and that they expected “different results.”
Alt-Info members ran in the elections under the umbrella of another pro-Russian force, the Patriots’ Alliance, after the National Agency for Public Registration had cancelled Alt-Info’s registration as a political party. The Patriots’ Alliance failed to pass the 5% threshold, garnering 2.4%.
Zura Makharadze, one of the leaders of Alt-Info who has been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, said that the deal with the Patriots Alliance was that Alt-Info would only get their share of the funding from the state budget if the party passed the five per cent threshold. Georgian parties automatically receive funding budget if they pass 1% electoral threshold.
Several weeks before the elections, two members of Alt-Info, Konstantine Morgoshia and Zura Makharadze, were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for serious human rights abuses.
Alti-Info has an ultra-conservative, anti-Western, openly pro-Russian and anti-liberal agenda.
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