Basic Court: Raonić was illegally appointed as the General Director of RTCG last year

The Basic Court in Podgorica has annulled the decision to appoint Boris Raonic as the general director of Radio Television of Montenegro (RTCG) from September last year as unlawful, "Vijesti" has learned.

Judge Katarina Janković accepted the lawsuit of Andrijana Kadija and Žarko Božović, ordering RTCG to make a new and legally based decision on the selection of the General Director from the registered candidates who meet the requirements under the Public Competition from July 2024, within eight days from the date the judgment becomes final.

Courts have previously ruled on several occasions that Raonić was illegally elected as the Director General of RTCG in 2021 and 2023.

He resigned from that position in July last year, was then elected acting director, and was appointed to a full term in September.

This followed the amendment of the Law on the National Public Broadcaster and the changes to the requirements that the Director General must meet - five instead of ten years of work experience in management positions in areas relevant to the performance of the activities of the Public Media Service (journalism, art, culture, audiovisual media activities, sociology, history, law, economics, etc.).

The Basic Court ruling issued on July 11 states that the Council's decision to appoint Raonić as director is unlawful because of the work experience he gained through a previous unlawful appointment, and that work experience was the decisive criterion that set him apart from all other candidates in the competition.

"According to Article 5, point 8 of the Labor Law, work experience means time spent in employment and professional training in accordance with the law, in the qualification of the level of education, or in professional qualification. Therefore, in accordance with the cited legal provision, it clearly follows that work experience is time spent in employment. Namely, the fact that work experience is also acquired through volunteering, as well as working on occasional and temporary jobs, however, this does not affect a different decision in this legal matter... In this specific case, it is not about work experience acquired through volunteering, working on temporary and temporary jobs, but about work experience that the selected candidate had in a management position, for which he was illegally elected. Since the decisions of the defendant appointing candidate Boris Raonić as the General Director were annulled in court proceedings as illegal, and since in the period from August 9.08.2021, 2024 to July XNUMX, the selected candidate was not in employment, since the legal consequence of those decisions is the nullity of the contract on the work concluded by the appointee, and since an illegally established employment relationship cannot be legalized, according to the findings of this court, the defendant, when deciding on the subject competition, could not also appreciate the work experience that the selected candidate acquired illegally, and this is all the more so since it was precisely because of the defendant's illegal actions that he was enabled to perform the duties of the General Director...", the judgment states, among other things. The court clearly indicated, in accordance with the Law on the National Public Broadcaster - Public Service and the Statute of RTCG, that the Council has the discretionary right to choose which candidate to choose as the General Director. However, Judge Janković notes that this right is limited by objective criteria and does not assume its arbitrariness in making decisions, but rather that there must be special, clear and valid reasons for the criteria that were considered when making the decision. "Also, the decision on selection cannot be based on the violation of the rights of another, that is, care must be taken that when selecting candidates in situations where they meet all general and specific conditions set out in the competition, other criteria that are evaluated are evaluated equally for all applied candidates," the ruling states.

The judge concluded that, since RTCG only valued Raonic's work experience, and not Kadija's, who also performed the duties of general director, it follows that they did not apply the same criteria to all participants in the competition.

The judgment also states that when making its decision, the court took into account that the Labor Inspectorate had determined that Raonić had five years of work experience for the election of the General Director in accordance with the Law on the National Public Broadcaster and that with a level of education qualification VII1, he had six years, three months and 13 days of work experience. However, this did not influence a different decision, because it is within the jurisdiction of that court to examine the legality of the disputed decision.