NEW CONVOCATION ON HOLD RAK Council without a single Bosniak announced a competition for director: Milinović for a second term!?

By: Amra Vrabac

The four-year term of the current director of the Communications Regulatory Agency, Draško Milinović, expires next month, and the RAK Council initiated the procedure and announced a public competition for the election of the Agency's director on May 17. The competition remains open for 28 days.

What is problematic is the composition of the RAK Council, which has been operating with only four members out of the prescribed seven since October 2023, none of whom are Bosniaks. The RAK Council consists of Nino Ćorić, Zoran Tomić, Miloš Šolaja, and Ljubo Božović.

Although the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliament adopted the Proposal for a Decision on the Appointment of the Council of the Communications Regulatory Agency (RAK) of BiH at its session on April 2, this year, in the composition: Tomislav Volarić, Tanja Andrić, Iza Razija Mešević, Vjekoslav Čerkez, Damir Šehanović, Alma Čolo, and Zoran Žuža, this proposal has not yet been considered by the House of Peoples of the BiH Parliament.

Due to the blockade that has been ongoing in the House of Peoples of the BiH Parliament, it is questionable when the work will continue and the new RAK Council will be confirmed.

"The current RAK Council will continue to operate until the election of a new Council convocation, as long as the new convocation is not elected and confirmed in accordance with the legal procedure in the Parliamentary Assembly," RAK explained to Patria.

This means that the incomplete RAK Council will most likely conduct the procedure and propose the appointment of the RAK director to the Council of Ministers of BiH, and that will be Milinović again.

Incidentally, Draško Milinović left the position of RTRS director back in December 2019 in order to become the director of RAK from the SNSD quota. During his term, wives and family members of SNSD officials were employed at RAK, so a new term would be a reward.

While Milinović managed RTRS, the Communications Regulatory Agency repeatedly imposed fines on this public service of Republika Srpska, which is at the service of the ruling coalition in the RS entity.

The Communications Regulatory Agency has very important responsibilities prescribed by the Law on Communications: creating and promoting rules in the broadcasting and telecommunications sectors, licensing operators in the broadcasting and telecommunications sectors, planning, managing, and allocating the frequency spectrum, applying technical and other standards related to quality, and establishing and maintaining a system of permit fees.

It is clear how important the Agency is for the development of a democratic society and the creation of a transparent and equitable environment in the communications and media segment, which should be a corrective force in every democratic society.

It should not be forgotten that the SNSD is blackmailing its coalition partners at the state level and does not want to adopt the budget of BiH institutions until agreement is reached on the distribution of money from the RAK accounts, the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH from excise taxes, and Elektroprenos.

Considering the composition of the RAK Council, it is clear why certain media outlets go unpunished and are not sanctioned for denying genocide and verdicts of international courts, glorifying war criminals, and spreading hatred towards certain national or religious groups.

The Communications Regulatory Agency also has premises in Banja Luka and Mostar, and according to Patria's information, five million KM from the distribution of fees collected by the Agency has already been allocated for the equipping of these premises.

After another SNSD official, Milica Ristović Krstić, was appointed head of the Institute of Metrology, there was an attack on media houses, specifically television stations that lost their audience measurement.

Ristović Krstić amended the rulebook, due to which the audience measurement provider Audience Measurement lost its license, and BiH went back 20 years.

Without audience data, many advertisers are unwilling to enter into marketing contracts with TV stations, which is a significant blow to private media outlets that will likely cease to exist at some point without marketing revenue.

There is a justified suspicion that the plan behind all of this is to select another company for measuring television audiences, but the question is how credible these data will be, and not whether they are ordered for various interests.

And in the hands of the SNSD, these two institutions are a powerful tool against "undesirable media."