Montenegro Ruling Party Accused of Subverting Broadcaster's Independence

After sacking two members of the national broadcaster's managing council, drawn from the ranks of civil society, over  alleged conflicts of interest, Montenegro's parliament on Friday appointed their successors.

NGOs and activists voiced dismay over the appointments of former journalist Goran Sekulovic - considered close to the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS.

The changes means that members of the broadcaster's council coming from the ranks of academia and NGOs can be overvoted now by supporters of the ruling DPS.

"It turned out that we were absolutely right when we said that it [the changes] was an organized campaign from the ruling majority in RTCG's Council, bearing in mind the profiles of the [new] candidates," Stevo Muk, from the Institut Alternativa NGO, told Radio Free Europe.

He added that the appointments showed a clear intent to influence the independence of the public broadcaster.

After a brief period of hope for more balance inside the public broadcaster, with the appointment of a new management in March 2017 that tried to distance itself from the ruling party and produce more balanced content, civil society organization now fear those gains will be lost.

It comes also at a moment what the media production has just started to become less politicly biased, and when RTCG has even formed an investigative journalism section.

NGOs critical of the recent changes note that Sekulovic, a former journalist in the once state-owned paper Pobjeda, is best known for an admiring book on veteran DPS chief Milo Djukanovic, called "The Prime Minister with Winning Spirit".

The NGO Politikon complained also that Sekulic's candidacy for RTCG's Council as a representative of civil society was not transparent.