At the 47th session of the Administrative Committee of the Parliament of Montenegro, a consultative hearing of candidates proposed for members of the Council of the Agency for Audiovisual Media Services (AMU) was held. The hearing was organized following a public call dated 13 May, addressed to non-governmental organizations in the field of media, the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts (CANU) and the Montenegrin PEN Center.
Dragoljub Vuković, the candidate of non-governmental organizations, Niko Martinović, the candidate of CANU, and Jelena Šušanj, the candidate of the PEN Center, were invited.
Committee President Jelena Nedović announced that Šušanj had not confirmed her participation "due to previously undertaken obligations."
The session was also attended by the director of the Media Center, Goran Đurović, who openly criticized the previous course of the procedure for electing members of the Council, stating that it was obstruction.
"I have no privilege compared to other NGOs because I am here today as a proposer," said Đurović.
He recalled that the Speaker of Parliament had to issue a public call for two members of the AEM back in June last year. That call was issued on December 10th, and cancelled on January 24th, "without any explanation as to why it was done." A new call followed on January 30th, but that procedure was also terminated, as he said, "in a scandalous manner," with the explanation that the governing bodies could not be determined.
"I've been in this for 25 years and I can clearly see what obstruction is," said Đurović, adding that even in the case of Zoran Rakočević's appointment to the Council of the City RTV Podgorica, there was no explanation about the proposer's bodies, so that was not a problem at the time.
Đurović warned the Board members not to try to postpone the process again: "What you managed to do in December and January - will not work again."
If, as he said, it is a political decision to "put Vuković and later Marijana Camović Velicković off the list", so be it, but that will not prevent the NGO sector from fighting.
"If you concluded on July 10 that Vuković's documentation was correct, there is no basis in the law for changing it," he warned.
He pointed out that hearing the candidates was a good move, but added: "If that is the standard for the Administrative Board, surely the ANB director is not less important than these two members of the Council that you do not call him for a control hearing."
He concluded that only by acting consistently and principledly can the impression that this is a political process be avoided.
Candidates about themselves and the legal framework
Dragoljub Vuković said that he is retired, but has been active in the civil sector for the past two decades. He stated that he has led projects at the Media Institute and is the president of the Media Center Assembly.
Niko Martinović recalled that he was a member of parliament in two convocations of the Parliament during the restoration of the state sovereignty of Montenegro, and that since 2011 he has been an academician of CANU.
"My sphere of interest is diametrical politics," he said.
When asked by MP Duško Stijepović about the new law on AEM and the penal provisions, Martinović said that he could not give a definitive answer, but that as a member of the Council he would "sanction what is the overall problem of our society - hate speech, defamation, nationalism". He added that he does not mind the penal policy "if you sanction something that really needs to be sanctioned".
Vuković said that the new law has improved the area and that the Media Center contributed to its development. He recalled a time when the AEM "did not react, for example, when the Pink television was burning and burning in Montenegro."
He expressed regret that AEM did not continue to promote professional principles under the new law, and assessed that a wide area was left without coverage, because "we do not have developed self-regulation... we do not have a regulator that covers that area."
About the North and Local Broadcasters
MP Velimir Đoković asked the candidates how to increase the availability of radio signals in northern Montenegro, and how to improve the status of local public broadcasters.
Martinović said that he did not know how to respond, because these were material, technical and personnel problems, and that he should first become familiar with them.
"I don't know what the Council's authority is to manage that," he said.
Vuković said that he remembers a time when it was not possible to hear a signal in the north, but that radio "has not lost its importance, especially in some dramatic situations."
He believes that local public broadcasters are in a better financial situation than before, but that they are "under the control of local authorities, and that should not be the case."
MP Jelena Kljajević asked what the candidates thought about the legal regulations of the European Union in the context of the increasing presence of the Internet as a means of information and its influence on public opinion.
MP Zoja Bojanić Lalović recalled that the European Commission, in its non-paper on Chapters 23 and 24, notes that the AEM Council was not completed.
"The procedure for selecting Council members does not include this consultative hearing," she stated and added: "I wonder today and all this time while we are talking about this hearing - whether curiosity really had a purpose, or are there other details behind it."
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