06 Jun Conditions Not Met for the Committee to Decide on Candidates and Nominators for the REM Council
Civic Initiatives and the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation today addressed the Committee on Culture and Information of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, demanding that the process of determining the final list of candidates and nominators for members of the REM Council be halted until numerous irregularities are resolved.
The very bodies of the National Assembly, including the Committee on Culture and Information and the President of the National Assembly, have already expressed doubts regarding irregularities involving 65 nominators and 12 candidates.
Civic Initiatives and the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation have contested 26 nominators and 14 candidates.
This means that in total, there are doubts about the legality of 91 nominators and 26 candidates, raised both by the Committee itself and by independent observers and nominators.
In addition, official documents of the National Assembly reveal serious misinterpretations of key legal concepts, including claims such as:
- that persons between the ages of 15 and 18 are not considered children,
- that child protection does not fall under the domain of human rights,
- that online news portals are considered electronic media under the Law on Electronic Media.
Due to such serious and systemic legal issues, an additional request has been submitted to the Committee on Constitutional and Legislative Issues for an authentic interpretation of the relevant legal provisions.
At the same time, several objections from organizations involved in this process were submitted for today’s session of the Committee on Culture and Information, highlighting the most blatant violations of the law by certain nominators and candidates.
Under such circumstances, adopting the final list of candidates by the Committee on Culture and Information would constitute an open violation of the law and a disregard for even its own concerns about the legality of the nominators and candidates. This would further undermine the legitimacy of the entire selection process for the REM Council.
Civic Initiatives and the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation demand that the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia bring the process back within the bounds of the law and ensure that the REM Council is finally elected in accordance with legal standards, rather than through an obvious distortion of the legal framework.