Student List Requests Files on Some Fifty RTS Staff: Why Did the Winners Reach the TV Station So Fast?

Serbia held its elections on 25 October. The new government still hasn't been formed and the old one is in a caretaker mandate - but there is already a request on the public broadcaster's desk. The Student List has asked Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) for a list of all employees and separate files on around fifty named editors, presenters and journalists.

The request was filed under the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance. For the whole staff, it asks for first and last names, job positions, newsrooms and type of contract. For the people on the list - professional biographies, proof that they met the requirements for their posts, documents on their first hiring at RTS and every later transfer. For some of the managers, also the decisions and minutes from their appointment. The list includes former heads of the broadcaster, among them Dragan Bujošević and Nenad Lj. Stefanović.

The list went public through a recording of an internal RTS meeting in which the new acting head of news programming, Borivoje Uskoković, reads out the names. The recording was released by media close to the former government, and the reaction from that camp was loud. Aleksandar Vučić, now leader of the opposition, said nothing like this had happened since the days of the Gestapo. Acting President of Serbia Ana Brnabić talks about blacklists of journalists, and the Journalists' Association of Serbia condemned the pressure on RTS staff.

This is worth pausing on. The free access law exists so citizens can see how institutions spend public money and whom they hire. Formally, the request is legal. But a list of fifty names is no longer a question about the system - it is a question about people. Whether they will be checked for their diplomas or for their views, nobody is saying for now.

There is also the open question of who exactly is behind the request. The Student List makes decisions through plenums, and its critics want a first and last name behind every move. Even prime minister candidate Dejan Šoškić recently said that MPs and the future government will not take orders from the plenums. If it isn't clear even inside the list who decides, how are the journalists at RTS supposed to know who is checking them?

The Balkans know this scene by heart: the government changes, and the first question is who gets to sit in the newsroom. The people now invoking the Gestapo were in power right up until the election. Would this request have looked quite so terrifying if it had come from their own ranks?

The new government constantly talks about transparency and freedom. Its first real test is exactly this: will the files end up in an archive, or in someone's drawer as a list of names to replace? The answer won't come from statements, but from the faces we see on screen a month from now.