On Wednesday, the Assembly of Serbia elected eight out of nine new members of the REM Council. NUNS President Željko Bodrožić believes that nothing will come of the new REM Council either, because the government has defiled the process and has not adhered to agreements with international institutions
“As we feared, the government desecrated the process of electing members of the Council Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) as no candidate of the national councils of national minorities was elected. I believe that we will not agree to that and that nothing will come of this election for members of the REM Council either,” the president told “Vreme” Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia Željko Bodrožić.
Assembly of Serbia elected eight out of nine new members of the REM Council on Wednesday, but no national council candidate was elected national minorities, because none of the two candidates got the required majority.
Bodrožić assesses that with such a procedure, the government showed that it does not want to leave even a simple majority in REM to independent experts, with the aim of retaining control and preventing REM from functioning and improving the media scene in Serbia, i.e. from influencing electronic media that violate laws and codes.
“This is again playing with the law. When we got to the point where at least five members of the REM Council were truly independent, i.e. not under the control of political parties, first of all the authorities, they managed to collapse that process – even though it was under the supervision of the European Union and the OSCE – again. Now, in our civil society group, we will consult on what to do next,” says Bodrožić.
“Smederevac and Garić are the wrong people in the wrong place”
He notes that the agreement was “that we will leave the process” if the government does what it was suspected that it would do and what it did.
He adds that it remains to be seen what the selected candidates will decide.
He assesses that the process “to the greatest extent remained within the legal framework”, but emphasizes that as candidates in certain groups of proponents “there are still people who in many respects cannot be members of the REM Council”.
“These are Stevica Smederevac and Miloš Garić. I think they are the wrong people in the wrong place, because they are in the service ruling parties and they have proven that all these years, so they will not be independent and will not work in the public interest,” Bodrožić points out.
He assesses that the situation is not good, because it was thought that the government would stick to the agreement and that the Serbian Parliament would elect all nine members of the REM Council.
“I will not divide people into ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’, but there are those who have so far shown that they are not independent and will not work for the common good, which is also clear from the election of Smederevac and Garić,” Bodrožić believes.
The process was ruined by SVM and SNS.
When asked if things would be different if the candidates for the national councils of national minorities were members of national minorities who cooperate better with the authorities, for example members of the Hungarian national minority, Bodrožić says that this was the intention.
“The authorities entered the process with the intention of playing around with the regulations, but over time, we brought them back to the legal framework, to the greatest extent. Then we saw that they overplayed their hand with national minorities, that they counted on there not being a coordinated vote.” Union of Vojvodina Hungarians not only did he get politically deeply involved in the process, but he also had a bad candidate, Istvan Bodžoni, who does not meet the requirements to be a member of the REM Council. However, they insist that he must come in eventually. The collapse of the process is a direct consequence of the decision of the Union of Vojvodina Hungarians and the support that party received for it from the Serbian Progressive Party. This violated the agreement that the government had with international institutions, and now the government wants to push its candidate into the REM Council by force,” concludes Bodrožić.
Who was elected?
On Wednesday, Stevica Smederevac was elected to the REM Council on the proposal of the Ombudsman, Commissioner for Equality and Protection of Information of Public Importance, Milan Petković on the proposal of the University, and Miloš Garić was elected on the proposal of the Association of Electronic Media Publishers.
The Assembly elected Mileva Malešić as a member of the REM Council on the proposal of the journalists’ association, Ira Prodanov Krajišnik on the proposal of the association of composers and film, stage and drama artists, on the proposal of associations dealing with the protection of freedom of expression Rodoljub Sabic, on the proposal of the association for the protection of children to Dubravka Valić Nedeljković, and on the proposal of churches and religious communities to Snežana Miljković.
Neither Muhedin Fijuljanin nor Ljumturije Ameti had a sufficient number of votes on the proposal of the Council of National Minorities.
Source: Vreme
