Stevanović on the elections for the REM Council: The previous one was terrible, this one is even worse.
The process of selecting members of the REM Council is scandalous – the previous one was terrible, and this one is even worse, says Ivana Stevanović from the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation, adding that it seems to her that we will end up with a REM that is the same or worse than before. She also adds that REM is one of the levers of power and that it was difficult to expect that it would be relinquished.
Stevanović told N1 that the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation has identified 16 candidates who do not meet either the legal or ethical requirements to be candidates for the REM Council, and therefore, they have called on the parliamentary committee to reject these candidacies.
“Of course, this was not done, which was expected; instead, the candidacies of those candidates were accepted. Thus, we are entering a process with individuals who have a good chance of being elected to the Council, who have spread hate speech, who have threatened to murder lawmakers, who have promoted Russian conspiracy theories and war propaganda, individuals who have been penalized for hate speech against minorities, people who are in a conflict of interest because they own production companies intended for the creation of television content, who are employed in the media, etc. Therefore, this is a situation in which we really cannot expect that the spirit of the Law on Electronic Media, enacted in 2023, will be fulfilled, to halt the practice of a captured REM that does not do its job, or only does it when it comes to dealing with independent media, but never with those who violate the law on a daily basis,” she stated.
As a result, she expresses concern that we will end up with a REM that will be either the same or worse than before.
“One thing is to choose a REM, whatever it may be, and simply check the box that this body has been constituted, while another is to ensure the actual application of the law and to form a body that will do its job, which will produce some effects on this catastrophic media scene. So, from the beginning, we had no hope at all, and everything that is happening now actually confirms our stance that it is difficult to expect the authorities to relinquish the REM, as it is one of the levers of their power. The authorities would no longer have a way to manipulate and deal with political dissenters so easily. If we had a fair, normal REM, all these television stations, all these toxic outlets would quickly disappear from the air and from cable operators,” Stevanović emphasizes.
Speaking about the attacks by the Assembly President Ana Brnabić on certain candidates, she sees this as an intimidation tactic against anyone who would dare to attempt to tackle or contribute to any improvement in this country.
“This is their matrix that we have been observing for a good 12 years. It is also their perpetual attempt to ‘drag everything into the mud’ – if these candidates are not good, then neither are those, and that everything together is not good in order to make people lose trust and further undermine the already completely destroyed institutions of this country. And that serves that purpose,” Stevanović explains.
Despite all this, she believes that we should not give up.
“I think we should fight to the very end. If I am right, if a REM is truly elected and constituted that will again not apply the Law on Electronic Media, I believe that we will very soon find ourselves in a position to, through various activities and different monitoring of what they do or do not do, come back to a situation where we have to choose a new REM Council for the third time or change the laws again. What is devastating in this whole story is that we are losing an enormous amount of time while all this lasts. The Law on Electronic Media was enacted in October 2023. Here we are in mid-2025, and we still do not have a functional REM, and apparently, we will not have one for some time,” the N1 interlocutor says.
The authorities afraid of the truth
She adds that the authorities benefit from a situation in which the REM does not exist, as the previous REM did nothing to improve the media landscape.
“The previous REM pretended to be blind, deaf, and dead to all the alarming violations of the law. If that REM had done its job, all these national television stations would no longer have licenses today, nor would some regional and lower-tier stations. Not only would they not have licenses, but they also would not be available on cable in the way they behave. So, of course, this situation benefits them; these television stations serve to manipulate daily and carry out propaganda, targeting those who are critics of the government. The situation we find ourselves in reflects what the true political will of the authorities is,” she noted.
Source: N1
