Letter from the Four Elected Members of the REM Council: Resignations if Voting Does Not Take Place Again

They addressed a public letter to the Committee for Culture and Information of the National Assembly of Serbia regarding the decision made at today’s session to reject the objection that would, as they stated, enable a lawful and legitimate conclusion of the elections in the ninth area – the area of proposers from the national councils – thereby completing the election of the remaining member who will ensure the legal condition of the independence of the REM Council.

“This decision by the Committee represents the final act of a process that has been marked from the very beginning by a lack of transparency, arbitrary interpretation of the law, and multiple violations of clearly prescribed procedures, which the proposers have fought against at every step. Instead of taking the opportunity to correct the obvious irregularities and ensure a minimum of legality, it has ultimately been decided to politically close the space for the election of legitimately nominated candidates,” stated the four elected members of the REM Council.

Throughout this process, they added, the public was not asked to participate in the lawful procedure but to accept political agreements outside the law, informal pressures, and solutions that are not grounded in either the Law on Electronic Media or the fundamental principles of the rule of law.

“Such an approach has always been, and remains, unacceptable,” they conveyed in the public letter sent to FoNet.

As they added, the REM Council that would be constituted based on such a decision by the Committee, without addressing the established irregularities and without a repeated vote, could not be considered an independent body.

“The majority in such a Council would not be independent, nor would it enjoy the trust of the public,” said the elected members of the REM Council, believing that neither the European Union nor other international institutions would recognize such an outcome as fulfillment of the reform commitments of the Republic of Serbia.

Keeping all this in mind, they announced that they would officially submit their resignations from membership in the REM Council on Friday, December 19, at 12 PM, unless the National Assembly repeats the vote and elects between the two legally established candidates by that time.

The public letter to the Assembly's Committee for Culture and Information was addressed in the interest of transparency regarding their specific steps, but “also as a clear record: the responsibility for the failure to constitute an independent REM Council lies solely with the political majority that consciously decided to subordinate the law to political interests.”

The Committee of the National Assembly of Serbia for Culture and Information established today a list of two candidates for the member of the REM Council proposed by the national councils of national minorities, namely Sreten Jovanović and Ištvan Bodžoni.

You can view the letter here.

Source: FoNet