December 31, 2020
After the beginning of this year finally saw the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) start working in its full composition of nine members, the end of the year was marked by one member resigning in protest over the election of the president of that body.
Slobodan Cvejić, one of two members of the REM Council elected at the beginning of 2020, tendered his resignation due to what he dubbed “brutal violations of democratic procedures” in the election of Olivera Zekić as REM president. It was just a few days earlier that Zekić had been re-elected as a member of the REM at the proposal of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party.
Speaking in an interview for Cenzolovka, Cvejić said that the REM is today a political battlefield and not an independent institution. Another member of the REM Council elected at the beginning of 2020, Judita Popović, considers the election of the REM president as being illegal and representing a coup by a group within the Regulatory Body, but she said that she will not resign.