Political scientist Slađana Ivančević, one of the candidates in the competition, filed a lawsuit against RTS, with a request for annulment of the decision on the election of Manja Grcic as general director.
Competition for general director RTS caused a lot of speculation, and the main one among them was whether he was chosen Manja Grcic does it meet the conditions of the competition at all?
Political scientist Slađana Ivančević, one of the candidates in the competition
therefore, she filed a lawsuit with the High Court in Belgrade, a lawsuit in which it is stated that “in the process of selecting the general director of RTS, there were serious irregularities that call into question the legality of the entire process”, UNS writes.
“The decision is illegal because it was made contrary to the Law on Public Media Services, the Statute of Radio and Television of Serbia, as well as the Rulebook on the procedure and conditions for the election of the general director, the conditions of the public competition and the general principles of legality, transparency and equality in the election process,” the lawsuit stated.
Disputed diploma of Manja Grčić
The competition for the election of the general director, published on December 17, 2025, the lawsuit recalls, stipulated that “all evidence of meeting the conditions of the competition should be submitted in original or a certified photocopy”, and that “incomplete and untimely applications will not be taken into consideration”.
“Thus, from the very text of the public competition, it clearly follows that the candidate must meet the conditions contained in the public competition at the time of submitting the candidacy and attach the original or a certified copy of evidence of meeting those conditions, as well as that incomplete applications will not be taken into consideration,” the lawsuit says.
As Slađana Ivančević’s lawyer Gordana Konstantinović explained in the lawsuit, when applying for the competition, Manja Grcic attached a photocopy of her degree from the University of Leeds with the title “Degree of Bachelor of Arts”, from which it was not possible to determine whether she met the requirement of at least 240 ESPB points acquired through study, prescribed by the Law on Public Information and Media.
The lawsuit also points out that at the time the application was opened, the diploma was not recognized in the Republic of Serbia, nor did it have an Apostille, that is, an international confirmation of the authenticity of a public document.
According to the Hague Convention on the abolition of the need for legalization of foreign public documents, the lawsuit reminds, public documents issued abroad must be certified with an APOSTIL seal, which confirms the authenticity of the signature, the identity of the signatory and the authenticity of the seal on the document. The lawsuit also states that until the end of the procedure for the recognition of a foreign diploma, even without an Apostille, such a document does not produce legal effect in the Republic of Serbia and cannot be used as proof of acquired education in the competition procedure.
Manja Grcic submitted the request for recognition of the diploma to the Qualifications Agency only on January 30, i.e. after the deadline for applying for the competition and after the Management Board had already declared the application proper, while the decision of the Qualifications Agency recognizing the diploma was made on February 11, the same day that Grcic was appointed general director.
“Instead of rejecting Manja Grčić’s application as incomplete because it is not visible from the content of the diploma how many ESPB points she has, nor was it notarized at that time, nor was it provided with an Apostille, that is, an international confirmation of the authenticity of a public document, for reasons known only to him, the Board of Directors of RTS determined at the 37th regular session held on January 22, 2026, that the candidacy is in order,” the lawsuit states.
Diploma certified 13 days after the end of the competition
In Slađana Ivančević’s lawsuit, she also writes that the Management Board of RTS knew or must have known that it was knowingly violating the provisions of the Law, and that this claim stems from the fact that after conducting interviews with the candidates on January 30, February 2, 2026, it made a decision to appoint Dragan Bujošević as Acting General Director of RTS.
After he refused, the said decision “disappeared”, and the Management Board of RTS continued to delay the procedure, it is stated.
“What the RTS Board of Directors was ‘waiting for’ in the meantime, it will turn out, is the adoption of the Qualifications Agency’s decision on the nostrification of candidate Manja Grcic’s diploma. It is particularly indicative that the request for recognition of the diploma was submitted on January 30, 2026, i.e. 13 days after the deadline for applying for the competition and eight days after the RTS Board of Directors had already determined that her application was ‘proper’,” the lawsuit says.
Indicative, it is added, is the date of the adoption of the decision itself, which coincides with the day when Manja Grcic was appointed general director of JMU RTS. This coincidence in time, it is concluded, points to the conclusion that the RTS Management Board consciously favored this candidate: first, ignoring the formal shortcomings of the application, and then aligning the decision-making dynamics with the date of the decision of the Qualifications Agency.
Source: Vreme
