Armandina Moniz
DILI (Notisias Online/Pacific Media Watch): Timor-Leste's Court of Appeal has once again delivered a judgment declaring the controversial Media Act unconstitutional.
The law, which was previously approved by the National Parliament on May 6 and sent to the President of the Republic, Taur Matan Ruak, to promulgate, was ruled by the Court of Appeal to be unconstitutional in August.
During the debate on the General State Budget for 2015 in the National Parliament, the Vice-President of Parliament, Adriano do Nascimento, rejected the court’s decision because it had been signed by an international judge. He said:
"We all know that international judges no longer work in Timor-Leste courts because of the parliamentary resolution, but why then has the court’s decision declaring the media law unconstitutional [been] signed by an international judge."
But Deputy Prime Minister Fernando Lasama had asked the President of the Court of Appeal to contribute to the resolution over the law, which the nation and the state had already approved.
Translated from the original Tetum language report.
A harsh media law threatens East Timor's budding democracy - Time magazine
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Pacific Media Watch
