Opposition Party Says Election of REM Council Members Is Laughing in Face of EC, EP

Branko Miljus (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

Freedom and Justice Party MP Branko Miljus has said that the entire process of electing members of the Council of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM) looks like "laughing in the face" of the European Commission (EC) and the European Parliament (EP).

"They (the authorities) are now staging processes and through those staged processes want to say they are changing something, when in fact not only are they not changing anything but are in this way preparing some future electoral fraud," Miljus told the Nova newspaper.

The Serbian parliament elected on Nov. 12 eight out of nine members of the new REM Council, while a new competition was called on Nov. 13 for the candidate nominated by the national councils of national minorities, because the previous candidates did not get the ruling majority's support for candidacy.

Miljus says that the parliamentary Culture and Information Committee, where ruling coalition members make up the majority, earlier assessed the process of selection of two candidates in that category as - completely regular.

"How did we go from it being completely 'clean' to all of them disputing it and playing dead regarding the vote on Wednesday? There are two reasons. One is that they don't know anything and are complete ignoramuses, while the other is that this has been a prepared 'dance' from the very beginning, to stall the forming of REM and the possibility of REM starting to do what it's supposed to do," and that is to regulate the media landscape at least a little, said Miljus.