The Administrative Committee of the Parliament of Montenegro determined Proposal of the list for the appointment of the RTCG Council by authorized proposers. The proposal of the list was unanimously supported by the representatives of the DPS, which confirmed that the DPS controlled this process from the beginning, and that there is not a single candidate on the list who is not according to the standards of the ruling party, because this became the key criterion for the election to the RTCG Council. it is stated in the statement jointly signed by CGO, CRNVO, Institute of Alternatives and CEMI.
They remind that the European Commission unequivocally expressed her position in Report for Montenegro, stating that political interventions in the work of the national public service are a matter of serious concern.
"Instead of taking it as a warning, the DPS rushes even more agilely to subdue all the institutions that are key to the legitimacy of the upcoming election process, directly endangering the dynamics of our path to the EU," the statement said.
They note that the European Commission also notices this as indicated by today's tweet of the head of the EU Delegation in Montenegro, Aivo Orava, in which he stated "The EC's latest report on Montenegro sent a clear message about the importance of removing the cause of political interference in the national public service RTCG. This is a matter of serious concern and decisive steps are necessary”.
"That tweet was also shared by the highest officials of the European Commission from Brussels, including Commissioner Johannes Hahn, as well as the US Embassy in Montenegro, indicating that it is a unique position of the key foreign policy partners of Montenegro. And it is with them that the DPS directly confronts for the sake of its party interests, endangering the state and public interest," the announcement states.
From the NGO sector, they believe that all candidates for RTCG Council members are aware of the circumstances in which they ran, and with their candidacies, they gave legitimacy to the pre-prepared scenario of the ruling party.
"Goran Sekulović, who is best known to the public as the author of appropriate biographies of the president of the DPS, and Milan Radović, who stood out in the last term by attacking colleagues from the critically oriented part of the NGO sector and played a key role in the dismissal of the former management by questioning the contract between CGO and RTCG, which was proven by court rulings to have caused no harm to RTCG as he claimed at the time," NGO representatives said in a statement.
The announcement states that the Law on the National Public Broadcaster RTCG was again violated in the Administrative Committee when proposing the list for new/old members of the Council.
"This is already becoming a tradition in the work of this body, whose illegal actions, such as the proposal for the removal of Council members from 2017, have been confirmed by court decisions. In particular, the Administrative Board has also this time assessed the documentation of the NGO that proposed the candidate Goran Sekulović as valid, and which do not operate in the field of human rights protection, as required by the Law, and showed favoritism towards this candidate. The legal criteria were ignored for a significant number of NGOs that proposed Sekulović, including pensioners' associations, folklore ensembles, vocal instrumental groups and theaters. Significant the public does not recognize the number of NGOs from the field of media that supported Radović by media NGO projects in this area," the announcement states.
Also, they remind from the group of NGOs, in addition to the fact that at the time of submitting the documentation, the candidate for the RTCG Council member, Pavle Radovanović, representative of the Chamber of Commerce of Montenegro, was appointed by the Government of Montenegro as a member of the Commission for European Integration and as the head of the Working Group for the preparation and conducting negotiations on the accession of Montenegro to the EU, which refers to negotiation chapter 3 (Right to establish a company and freedom to provide services), the Administrative Board, contrary to Article 26 of the Law on the National Public Broadcaster RTCG, proposed Radovanović as a member of the RTCG Council.
"Even the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (ASK) pointed out a formal obstacle for Radovanović to be a member of the RTCG Council. The administrative board could not ignore the fact that at the time of submitting the documentation, the candidate Pavle Radovanović did not meet the requirements established by law for appointment as a member of the RTCG Council," it is stated. in the announcement.
They remind that the Administrative Board made the same mistake during the previous procedure of appointing members of the RTCG Council when it allowed Slobo Pajović to be appointed as a member of this body despite the negative attitude of KAS, because Pajović was also a public official at the time of submitting his candidacy. Then the Administrative Board allowed the former DPS councilor Pajović to become a member of the RTCG Council.
"The administrative board completely made sense of the process of appointing members of the RTCG Council, establishing the violation of laws and procedures as a standard in its work, but also causing enormous damage to the ongoing integration processes," according to the statement signed by CGO, CRNVO, Institute of Alternatives and CEMI.
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