Civic Initiatives: The Assembly's Professional Service Violated the Law in the Process of Selecting Members of the REM Council
The non-governmental organization Citizens' Initiatives has assessed that the Expert Service of the National Assembly, by including nine new proposers in the voting on candidates for the Council of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM), has violated the Law on Electronic Media.
“By including nine new proposers in the voting on the candidates for the REM Council, the expert service acted contrary to the report of the Committee published on October 14, 2025, thereby grossly violating the law and the credibility of the process,” the organization stated in a press release.
At the meeting for the harmonization of National Councils of National Minorities, as added by the Citizens' Initiatives, the expert service enabled national councils that did not participate in the previous process to vote, which is why they requested that the “illegitimate ballots” in that category be annulled.
“In this group of authorized proposers, the candidates were proposed by: the Bosniak National Council, the Albanian National Council, and the National Council of the Hungarian National Minority. At the meeting held earlier today, nine national councils that initially did not propose their candidates and did not participate in the process were illegally invited to vote, and thus do not have the right to vote,” the statement adds.
The organization also noted that in the very invitation sent to the national councils, the Assembly stated that only one representative should be sent to the harmonization meeting for each of the three authorized proposers, and not for 12, as was the total number of voters in the end.
“In this way, the integrity of the process was directly undermined, allowing the candidate from the National Council of the Hungarian National Minority, Ištvan Bodžoni, to be elected. This violated the Law on Electronic Media, since, according to the applicable rules, the legitimate number of votes was exclusively held by candidates Muhedin Fijuljanin and Lumturija Ameti, who received the most votes in this group of three authorized proposers,” the press release states.
They assessed that it is completely unlawful to include proposers who did not suggest their candidates at that stage of the process, which is why they requested that the illegitimate ballots in that category be annulled and the candidates who received the highest number of votes from legitimate proposers, namely Muhedin Fijuljanin and Lumturija Ameti, be declared successful.
