Sabic Reveals Backroom Deal Behind Smederevac's REM Election

Rodoljub Sabic, a member of the Council of Serbia’s Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM), told N1 today about the deal that preceded Stevica Smederevac’s election as president of the body. According to Sabic, the independent members’ votes for Smederevac were not a judgment of the candidate’s qualifications, but part of a broader political arrangement, one conditioned, among other things, on how the media would be monitored during the election campaign.

Smederevac was elected on September 22, at the fourth continuation of the REM Council’s constitutive session, ending nearly two years without a functioning regulator. Sabic says that before the vote, the pro-government group had been floating the name of Milos Garic as its candidate.

“This is not an assessment of the quality of the elected candidate, because naturally, considering the qualities, I would rather have voted for anyone from the group I belonged to, but at its core, this is an agreement,” Sabic explains.

Sabic says the independent members returned to REM after an authentic interpretation of the law, and that they were met at the time with a categorical position that the head of the regulatory body had to come from the pro-government group.

“Milos Garic was even singled out by name, a corresponding campaign was run over two rounds of voting, and we opposed that and said such a campaign resembles blackmail,” Sabic says.

What was agreed before the vote

According to Sabic’s account, the agreement spelled out several points: the president and deputy would be elected unanimously, Smederevac would become president, and Ira Prodanov Krajisnik would become his deputy. The two of them were also to draw up the agenda together, Council sessions were to become permanently open to the public going forward, and REM was to immediately start working through its backlog of open issues.

The rush had a procedural reason. With parliamentary elections called for October 25, REM is legally required to monitor the media and rule on complaints, and without an elected president the body could not do that. Sabic says the independent members could have resigned instead, but that this would have effectively let the pro-government group keep working without any outside oversight.

The dispute over Informer

Part of the agreement, according to Sabic, was a proposal to add Informer to the list of broadcasters REM monitors during the campaign. He says the pro-government group did not reject that proposal outright but postponed it, to a new session scheduled for Friday, September 25.

“We will see whether they dare to reject it. If they reject it, they will turn the monitoring into a caricature immediately,” Sabic notes.

Here Sabic’s account clashes with what Smederevac himself said the same day, in an interview with RTS. The new president of the REM Council announced that during the campaign the regulator would monitor broadcasters 24 hours a day, and that no radio or television media service provider would be exempt from oversight.

“The basic postulate is that the entire process runs democratically, that all participants in the election race have the right to get space to present their views and address citizens, that the media convey their positions evenly, in a balanced and objective way, that they neither favor nor attack anyone, in other words, everything set out in the Law on Electronic Media,” Smederevac said.

Sabic, however, claims that during the Council session itself, Smederevac said the opposite, that REM lacked the technical capacity to extend monitoring specifically to Informer, and that he had accused Sabic of targeting the outlet on political grounds.

“And now suddenly, everyone will be monitored? When I asked for monitoring of a television station indisputably exposed as favoring one side, the president told me I was engaging in political targeting,” Sabic states, adding that if Smederevac continues to work this way, he can expect a criminal complaint for abuse of office or negligent performance of duty.

Smederevac announces changes to the rules of procedure

Alongside the monitoring issue, Smederevac also spoke to RTS about the Council’s plans: a competition to fill the managing boards of public media services, changes to REM’s Rules of Procedure, and the adoption of a long pending Statute. He also said the Council would monitor media service providers who use artificial intelligence to manipulate content, arguing that technological change is moving faster than regulation.

“The moment in which this is happening is extremely politically complex, the campaign is under way, so there is a lot of work ahead for the Council and its services. The services operate according to established, multi-year practice when it comes to election cycles, and there is a debate under way in the Council about which broadcasters are being monitored,” Smederevac said.

This portal previously reported on Smederevac’s own election as president of the REM Council. Asked whether the independent members’ participation in a REM constituted this way gives the government legitimacy, Sabic said this government has driven Serbia to the bottom of rankings on everything from corruption to media freedom, and that in his assessment it holds no such legitimacy.

“This is a government against which the European Parliament has voted a resolution, and for which ODIHR is sending its largest delegation yet to monitor the elections,” Sabic says, adding that the option of resigning remains open to the Council’s independent members.

Whether the agreement to add Informer to the monitoring will hold will become clear on Friday, September 25, when the REM Council’s new session is scheduled and the proposal will be put to a vote.