All the members of this body have never been changed. The election of Council members has never taken place in such a heated socio-political atmosphere. Brussels has never been so interested in the course and outcome of this process. Hence so much nervousness, passion and established illegalities for which no one has yet been held accountable
It took almost half a year for the Parliamentary Committee for Culture and Information to return to a new beginning. More precisely: five months and ten days separate two Public Calls for nominations of candidates for the election of members of the Council of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media. Has the government learned any important lessons in the past six months? If we judge by the argumentation with which the first procedure was formally ended and a new one started, we would say that only after some subsequent Public Call could a "third chance" follow.
If the first Public Call was a consequence of the amendments to the Law on Electronic Media, buying time in the form of an unsuccessful initiative before the Constitutional Court and the legal dissolution of the REM Council, the second competition was the result of a two-week student blockade of Radio and Television Serbia and a request to the authorities to end the previous one and start a new process of electing future members of the Council of Regulators.
If there had been no student protest, the big question is what would have happened to the unsuccessful process for the election of the REM Council, which reached a dead end after seven candidates withdrew their consent. Although the resolution of the Gordian knot in connection with the election of the Council in March was announced from Brussels in a package with the adoption of amendments to two media laws and the implementation of ODIHR recommendations, nothing concrete happened until the student blockade of the republic's public media service and the visit of European Commissioner Marta Kos, when the process was formally derailed.
RESPONSIBILITY, WHAT WAS THAT
Although the representatives of the Assembly, in communication with the diplomatic corps, persistently denied the possibility of announcing a new Public Call for weeks, while insisting on continuing the already started election procedure, at the end of April, following the initiative of the opposition MPs, a session of the Committee for Culture and Information was held, which formally ended the old procedure and started a new one.
The government's position is reflected in the argumentation of the decision that formally ended the previous proceedings. Without assuming a single iota of responsibility for the illegalities that led to the collapse of the previous procedure, the deputy president of the Committee for Culture and Information signed a document stating that "...the remarks made in public regarding the transparency of the procedure for proposing members of the Council, although unfounded, had a strong and particularly negative effect on the public, which significantly reduced public confidence in the legality and legitimacy of this procedure of exceptional social importance." The opposition representative's attempt to change this wording was not supported. Obviously, no one is to blame. Let's move on.
The atmosphere from the aforementioned Board session does not give us the right to be optimistic about the ongoing process for several reasons. The candidates who left the process were falsely characterized as "oppositional", while some MPs maliciously interpreted their decision as part of a well-designed "pumping" strategy. This is followed by a narrative in the pro-government media, in which no words were chosen to address individual candidates for REM Council members. Probably preventively, so that they don't think of running again. Especially some of them who were clearly targeted by the government as the culprits of the troubles with the election of the REM Council. The fate of the criminal complaint that was filed half a year ago against Nevena Đurić, the president of the Committee for Culture and Information, is an important piece in this unhappy mosaic that shows the absolute absence of political will to prosecute someone whose merit was not announced in time for the first Public Call, which resulted in the fact that the REM Council has not yet been elected. Instead of criminal and political responsibility for the violation of the Law on Electronic Media, the President of the Committee, Nevena Đurić, was promoted to the position of Vice-President of the Republic Parliament. Obviously, it is a reward that Serbia has not had a Council of Regulators for half a year, and that has not happened since its establishment, twenty years ago.
EITHER SYNERGY OR NOTHING
Due to all of the above, we should not expect an influx of interested candidates who meet the strict legal criteria. Rather, it could be said that the increased expectations of professionals and the general public are based on student activism in this area, without which it is difficult to expect a positive outcome and a two-thirds majority in the future REM Council. At least six independent and professional (out of a total of nine) members of this body could bring hope that something will fundamentally change in relation to the justly denounced regulatory body. Such a goal can only be achieved in the case of synergy between the key actors in the started process: students, authorized proposers, candidates, representatives and organizations of the non-governmental sector and opposition representatives of the republic. The real question and at the same time the biggest dilemma is whether such a synergy is possible and realistic in the context of the heated debate as a result of the student demand for the dissolution of parliament and the calling of elections that followed the announcement of the Public Call for the election of REM Council members.
The mentioned synergy could be crucial in the upcoming stages of the demanding process - during the nomination of candidates, at the meetings of the Committee for Culture and Information, during the coordination of the authorized proposers, at the public hearing and finally - during the voting in the Assembly when each candidate in nine categories must be supported by at least 126 votes. Otherwise, we will have a new election process...
POISONS AND MEDICINES
All the mentioned sensitive steps testify to the complexity of the REM Council election process, which is being repeated (for the second time?) due to illegality. For consolation, it is only a prerequisite and the beginning of a long road to healing part of the media scene, which is under the authority of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media. That's why we should already think about the steps that, hopefully, the expert independent composition of the Council of Regulators should take in this neglected, tabloid and poisoned media environment.
The dilemma of the existence of a logical connection between the student blockade of RTS, the election of the REM Council and dissatisfaction with the program, reporting and role of the public media service could be most effectively removed by the future concrete steps of the newly elected members. The initiative of the future REM Council to replace the management boards and program councils of public media services is the first step in the healing of these systems supported by personnel changes in the management structures. In this sense, it is clear why many were so determined to deny the authority of the REM Council over Radio-television of Serbia and Radio-television of Vojvodina.
The airing of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media, in addition to the necessary personnel changes, should include a comparative analysis of the program elaborations and the content of the programs of the media service providers, as well as the appropriate argued consequences for the established discrepancy. In this light, it is better understood why just these days an increasingly popular television channel returned the license to REM in an attempt to proactively avoid its powers. To this should be added the completion of the long-started procedure of granting the fifth television license for access to a multiplex with national coverage. It would be more than enough to start the work of the future REM Council.
Unfortunately, the approved proposal for amendments to the Law on Public Media Services in its draft remains halfway on the reform path towards a different and better RTS and RTV. To all this should be added the amendments to the Law on Public Information and Media as well as to the Law on Electronic Media, which in the already mentioned "Brussels package" are awaiting parliamentary approval. The problem is that none of the other documents have passed the mandatory public hearing, which is another testimony to the selective application of legal procedures. We should also not forget the implementation of the important recommendations of ODHIR on the reform of the electoral process, which are related to the election of a fundamentally different REM Council by the system of merged courts.
This is where we return to the beginning of this story. All the members of this body have never been changed. The election of Council members has never taken place in such a heated socio-political atmosphere. Brussels has never been so interested in the course and outcome of this process. Hence so much nervousness, passion and established illegalities for which no one has yet been held accountable.
We are at a new beginning that can bring important changes. Therefore, this opportunity must not be missed.
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