Parliament’s Culture Committee adopts REM report

Opposition MP Aleksandar “Cuta” Jovanovic told REM members at the meeting that this is the last report they are submitting to the Committee because they will no longer hold their posts.

“Are you aware that this is the last report you are submitting, but you will see the day after tomorrow because what you have been doing for years is adding to the poison the spilling of which you allow on a daily basis,” Jovanovic told the Committee meeting, following which MP of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) Nebojsa Bakarec accused Jovanovic of making threats.

Head of the REM Monitoring and Analysis Service Stevica Smederevac said that he came to the meeting in “good faith” and described the MPs’ behavior toward him as inappropriate.

He criticized the MPs, noting that REM members do not feel comfortable when, for example, opposition MPs come knocking on their door demanding their resignations.

Committee chair and member of the opposition People’s Party Sinisa Kovacevic said that REM members are public servants and that it is not their place to assess the MPs’ conduct.

He thanked the REM for the Report and asked if it will also have something to say at the end of the year if a television station introduces broadcasts of “chainsaw fights.”

Kovacevic stressed that the government and the opposition are no longer divided by trenches but by canyons, that he shares his colleagues’ opinion that the REM is not doing its job properly and that he will not note vote for the Report as it is, because it does not include criticism of a single show, appearance or hate speech.