UNS: Six proposed candidates do not meet the requirements for members of the REM Council.

The UNS stated that on the list of proposed candidates put forward by churches and religious communities, Sumeja Smailagić, Dr. Mevlud Dudić, and Snežana Miljković do not meet the requirements.

Sumeja Smailagić, as noted in her biography, has nine years of work experience. Proposed candidates, as stipulated by the Law on Public Information and Media, may be experts who “have at least ten years of experience in the electronic media business, or are involved in the media market and other tasks in the field of electronic media in professional domestic and international organizations, particularly: lawyers, political scientists, communication scientists, and sociologists.” The UNS has previously pointed this out in its remarks.

Neither Dr. Mevlud Dudić nor Snežana Miljković meet the conditions set out in Article 10 of the Law on Electronic Media. Dr. Mevlud Dudić, as stated by the UNS, teaches courses Da'wa 1 and Da'wa 2 at the Faculty of Islamic Studies (FIS), which contain exclusively religious content and lack media or communication-related material.

Regarding the candidates proposed by the national councils of national minorities, the UNS emphasized that Ljumturije Ameti and Muhedin Fijuljanin do not meet the requirements for candidacy.

According to comments from the UNS, Ljumturije Ameti does not fit the description of a candidate in terms of education and the job he has performed, considering he completed a three-year Higher School of Business Economics and Entrepreneurship.

Based on his previous work experience, the UNS pointed out that Muhedin Fijuljanin also does not meet the conditions. The UNS added that his biography does not state that he was appointed as the acting director of the Educational-Scientific Center “Pešter” by the Government of Serbia on October 1, 2020. An additional obstacle, according to UNS comments, is the measure imposed on him by the Anti-Corruption Agency in 2014.

On the list of candidates proposed by associations of electronic media publishers in the Republic of Serbia, the UNS noted that Miloš Garić also does not meet the requirements, given that he does not have ten years of experience in electronic media.

Furthermore, in the biography submitted by Garić during his application, it states that he completed his undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Culture and Media at Megatrend from 2010 to 2013, even though those studies last four years. On the other hand, upon his appointment as a state secretary, the official website of the Government of Serbia stated that he graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Belgrade, which is another contradiction.

In fact, candidates for members of the REM Council are required to submit a statement to the authorized proposer confirming that there are no obstacles regarding Article 15, Paragraph 1 of the Law on Electronic Media, which stipulates that a person who “holds a public office in the Republic of Serbia, an autonomous province, or a local government unit” cannot be a member of the REM Council.

The UNS commented that it maintains the position that deficiencies in this statement cannot be rectified by the ministry's opinion on a “supplementary statement” that candidates should provide when included on the candidate list, prior to their election.

“This undermines the very essence of Article 15, Paragraph 2 and results in unequal treatment concerning other candidates. The absence of obstacles, even if assessed at the moment of election, does not absolve the candidate from the fact that at the time of giving the statement, he did not indicate that obstacles exist nor committed to removing them,” this Association wrote to the Committee for Culture and Information.

In this way, as the UNS added, the candidate misled the authorized proposers as well as the Committee for Culture and Information.

“A candidate for a member of the REM Council cannot and must not provide a statement with false content, nor can such a statement be corrected by any subsequent one, which the Law on Electronic Media does not recognize or foresee,” the UNS added.

The REM Council consists of nine candidates. The Committee has not yet submitted proposals from associations whose goals are the protection of children and the Protector of Citizens, the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality, and the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection.

Source: UNS