Parliamentary Insider for February 2019 brings monthly analyses of the work of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, including law summaries and key novelties introduced by the adopted laws, that are, for the first time, accessible in English. The beginning of the new year in the parliament has been marked with the boycott of a part of the opposition, due to which in February 2019, at the 11th Extraordinary Session, some MPs seats remained empty. While the boycott will for sure mark the spring session that is about to begin, it seems that the abuse of parliamentary procedures will occur after all, and also diverting the discussion to the topics which are not a part of the agenda. Furthermore, the extraordinary session has demonstrated that the absence of MPs from the opposition coincides with the absence of the amendments which had been used by the MPs of the ruling majority during the entire 2018 in order to prevent the meaningful plenary debate.
The Union of Informed Citizens (UIC), an Armenian civil society organization, received the OSCE Democracy Defender Award for 2019. The award ceremony took place on March 11 in Vienna, and was attended by CRTA Director Vukosava Crnjanski as a representative of the last year’s Democracy Defender Award recipient.
The organisation Crta launched a campaign “I want a Commissioner, not a yes-man!”, in order to draw attention to the fact that the process of selection of the Commissioner should be initiated and that the criteria of transparency, openness and integrity must be respected. Besides, the citizens should be informed about the identity of the potential candidates for the function, so that the new Commissioner could continue to perform their duties as an independent professional entity.
The organisation CRTA filed criminal charges against accountable persons in 11 public authorities and companies from Novi Sad, Pančevo, Vrbas, Vršac, Šid and Ivanjica, the vehicles of which were present in Lučani during local elections held on December 18th 2018. The charges were filed to competent prosecutors’ offices regarding the criminal offence against official duty – abuse of office of an accountable person pursuant to article 227 of the Criminal Code.
While issuing the official response to citizens who reported the Serbian Progressive Party promotional video, the Regulatory Authority of Electronic Media published 189 email addresses of the complainants. In this way, personal data visible from numerous email addresses became available without the consent of the person to whom they relate.
At the session held on February 6th 2019, the Regulatory Authority Council passed on the decision rejecting as unfounded complaints filed by more than 750 citizens because media outlets TV Prva and TV Happy broadcast a promotional video containing explicit political contents and political messages, and having a political impact on the viewers – which is directly contrary to articles 12 and 14 of the Law on Advertising which forbid covert and parallel advertising.
On February 5th, the organisation CRTA launched the initiative #ProbudiREM (Wake up the REM) prompting all interested citizens to file complaints to the REM via an online form because TV Prva at 10:18 on February 3rd and TV Happy at 21:50 on February 4th broadcast the Serbian Progressive Party video displaying political contents.
Freedom House, an independent international organization, announced that the status of Serbia in 2018 changed from free to the partly free country. We are witnessing significant and rapid centralization of power in the hands of one branch of government – the executive, and closure of institutions before the interests of the public. Institutions in Serbia and mechanisms established to protect citizens and public interest actually serve to fulfill some other interests in society
Democracy should be understood as a movement, as one process, and not as a monolith. Anyone who tries to approach the ideal of the democratic system falls into frustration, because it is afraid that it will not be reached as such. A strong and stable democracy has many steps, because democracy is progress
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Democratic culture
Because politics is not just for politicians. It is our human and citizen right to participate in the processes of making decisions which influence our lives. A dialogue has no alternative.
Free and fair elections
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Free media
Because media should ask questions and critically analyse the reality. We need the media which protect the public interest and tackle the needs of the citizens.
