II SÉRIE-E — NÚMERO 21

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We cannot accept the reinstatement of a new Cold War agenda. We must prevent that by all means.

What an extraordinary gift we could offer to our Organization by helping to solve the Ukrainian problem. The

OSCE PA has the expertise in promoting and assisting measures towards reconciliation and peace. We have

to work relentlessly to ensure that Ukraine remain a democratic country and we must help the Ukrainian people

to meet their challenges in a safer, fairer and freer way.

We must demand that all arrested protesters must be unconditionally released. Political reforms and further

negotiations between the President and the leaders of the opposition must continue in a productive way.

We must stress that a new inclusive government should be established immediately and constitutional

reforms must be undertaken in order to pave the way to a free and fair presidential election as soon as

possible.

And we should constitute today a task force in order to monitor the situation at the level of the Ukrainian

Parliament, with the support of our Ukrainian colleagues.”

A Deputada Nilza de Sena também participou neste debate tendo afirmado:

“We can measure the maturity of democracy by the way the media system of a country is structured and its

press freedom. When we think about this, what happened in Ukraine must worry us all.

The need for distinctions between media systems, particularly nondemocratic media systems, is further

underscored by a number of wide-ranging empirical studies. And we cannot neglect the evidence of political

control of Ukrainian media and the weakness of their democracy.

Democracy is a political system that includes the legitimacy of a government; a Bill of Rights that must

guarantee freedoms; democratic governments that rely on the rule of law; checks and balances against abuse

of power; and a strong independent press.

“Democracy is a system that should guarantee that the minority view is heard before

In free systems, the population must have access to the media; there must be a significant degree of

pluralism in all media, either internal or external; the press should reflect different views and ideologies; and the

press must not be under the control of the state or under the control of such a limited number of private owners

that pluralism is limited.

In traditional authoritarian systems, pluralism in the media is tolerated, but there are limits, particularly on

issues that are of central importance to the regime, such as national security and elections.

Access to the media may be open and private ownership may be tolerated, but other mechanisms are used

to control messages. Subsidies, targeted tax advantages, government advertising and other forms of

assistance are used to promote support. To silence critics, the state does not resort to pre-publication

censorship so much as economic pressure through selectively applied legal and quasilegal actions against

owners, as well as broadly worded laws which prescribe criminal and civil penalties for journalists concerning

such issues as libel, state interests, national security and the image of the head of state.

This neoauthoritarian media system also has a weak judiciary that may be pliant to the interests of the

political leadership, or which may have difficulty in ensuring that its mandate is enforced. At its worst, the

regime uses, condones or tolerates violence against opposition journalists and editors. That’s what happened

recently in Ukraine. One of the goals is to create uncertainty among journalists and, through that, self-

censorship, the most common and important limit on journalistic activity.

Where neo-authoritarianism is somewhat different from more traditional authoritarian systems is the context

of the spread of democracy and the strategic use of the communicative power of television. While some of the

elements of a democratic mass political media system are tolerated, giving the appearance of democratization,

there are fundamental limits to media autonomy.

Leading opposition politicians regularly complain that they do not have access to television networks that

reach the largest audiences.

After the 2012 parliamentary elections in Ukraine, the OSCE recommended to the Ukrainian authorities

further efforts in improving its democratic patterns. The last events in Ukraine represented a serious regression

in these efforts.

We are all concerned with the events in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine and we must show our full support

for democratic values. However, it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide about their future. I believe that they

will choose wisely and that democracy will prevail.”