The history of NCD

In the spring 2006, Center for civil society development PROTECTA, Committee for Human Rights in Nis and Media Center Nis, started the petition for decentralization and reexamination of the RBA decision on assigning the national TV frequencies. Direct reason was the decision of the Republic Broadcasting Agency (RBA) not to assign TV frequencies to the stations outside Belgrade. Moreover, TV5 from Nis received no adequate answer, and on the insistence of the station owner, the members of RBA sent a letter in which they refer to a “conscience”, as the only criterion for decision making. 18,248 signatures were collected for 13 days. The signatures were handed in to the Republican Parliament, in which the delegation of NGO representatives was welcomed by Mr. Predrag Markovic, the President of the Assembly of the Republic of Serbia. Despite the fact that all Assembly members were informed about this initiative, the Assembly of the Republic of Serbia never discussed about the required topics.
National Coalition for Decentralization (NCD) was established in 2006, owing to the grant approved by the National Endowment for Democracy from Washington. NED supported project proposal of the Center for civil society development PORTECTA, Media Center Nis and Committee for Human Rights Nis, by which it was planned that local NGOs and representatives of local self-governments gather on the idea of decentralization so that the broad advocacy front directed towards the decision makers in Serbia could be created.
Regional centers of NCD were formed very quickly in:  Negotin (Committee for Human Rights), Uzice (Center for Human Rights and Democracy), Novi Pazar (Urban In) and Vranje (PROTECTA Vranje). The representatives of NCD visited large number of cities where they met the citizens and activists of local communities who accepted the idea and decided to include themselves in the work of NCD.
 Final activity in the process of establishing NCD was organization of the conference about decentralization, which was held in Niska Banja from March 28 to March 30, 2007, where the representatives of 54 NGOs from the territory of entire Serbia presented the following conclusions:
        1.    Serbia must be decentralized as soon as possible, so that it could start using the democratic potential present in local communities;
        2.    Fiscal and economic decentralization is absolute priority in this process;
        3.    The interests of the citizens, not of political parties, must be the focus of decentralization
        4.    The capacities of local communities must be strengthened so that bigger prerogatives of power could be taken over by them;