HOW AUTHORITIES FAIL TO RESPOND TO VIOLENCE, IS THERE A CORELATION BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF BALLOTS AND THE NUMBER OF VOTERS
New evidence of forgeries
After finding the fake court seals in Sabac, they were also detected in Belgrade. Approximately sixteen hundred (1611) forged seals of the First Basic Court were found among statements of signatories who allegedly supported the Hungarian movement – for change, the Democratic Union of Hungarians from Vojvodina and the Democratic Union of Croats. After an inspection of a portion of the materials it was also confirmed that 3957 statements of the voters who supported the list “It’s only us – Natural movement – Vladimir Zaharijev”, were stamped by a forged seal of the First Basic Court. In its official statement, the court claims that the seal with the Roman numeral III has been out of circulation since January 2015 and that the disputed signatures weren’t certified by them. The competent prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation and the disputed cases have found their way to the police. “The irregularities observed over the course the inquiry were diverse, ranging from the scanned seal of the Basic Court in Sabac, the illegal certification of signatures; I’m referring to the conduct of court officials, to the instance in which a seal of the First Basic Court in Belgrade which was out of circulation was used for certification”, confirms Dusan Djerkovic from the Criminal Police administration.
Lists and ballots
“After the confirmation of over 15.000 forged signatures on six electoral lists, the legality and the legitimacy of the election process will entirely hinge on what course of action will the competent authorities undertake within the next 24 hours”, says CRTA, part of the “Citizens on guard” observing mission. This mission will request an official review of the written citizen statements of support to the electoral lists which were presented to the Electoral Committee because, as they say, only full transparency can reestablish the publics’ confidence in the entire process. Referring to the election process, the editor of “Cenzolovka” Zoran Nikolic said that the issue he finds the most troubling is the number of voters. He reminded us that it was officially proclaimed that Serbia has 6.8 million registered voters. “According to the latest census Serbia has 7.200.000 citizens, a million and two hundred thousand of whom are minors, and this includes the number of voters that live outside of Serbia… Something’s not right with these numbers”, he adds. “It is very complicated to determine the overall turnout in practice since we don’t know the exact number of registered voters” says Nikolic. This means that that’s the number of ballots that will be printed out, but that leaves room for manipulation, he adds.
Inadequate reaction to violence
“The election campaign was characterized by a large number of incidents to which there was no adequate response, as well as the holding of election rallies in place forbidden by the law”, says Milan Antonijevic, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights. “It remains to be seen if any of these cases will reach court in the foreseeable future and if we will find out who assaulted activists of certain political parties and, as can be seen now, of all political parties”, says Antonijevic and adds that he expects that it will be any of these assaults were organized or not. He remarked that it is evident “that the organizers of the rallies, who often come from ruling parties, haven’t read the Public Gathering Act which they’ve passed earlier this year and that that’s one of the reasons rallies are organized in places prohibited by the law, such as in front of schools, hospitals… and that is against the law.”
Few party advertisements, a lot of Vucic
Results of the civic monitoring of the election campaign, organized by Reporter School “CRTA” from Novi Sad, “Cenzolovka” and BIRN, suggest that the Serbian Progressive Party took up 28% of air time on public service channels, the Serbian Socialist Party 22%, the Democratic Party and the Social-democratic Party 11% each while all the other parties combined took up a mere 28% of air time. The representative of the Reporter School “CRTA” from Novi Sad Dubravka Valic Nedeljkovic stated that SPS took up 46% of air time on commercial channels, SSS 10, DP, SRP, DPS and New Serbia 5% each, with the other parties taking up 25% of air time. She also remarked that these elections were characterized by few TV advertisements, door to door campaigning, mostly negative campaigning by political parties, warring party statements which were mostly about their political adversaries and that most of the confrontations were on the line of SRP-SPP, SPP-DP, SSS-DP, DP-SPP and SSS-SPP. The reporter Tamara Skrozza explains that CRTA’s and Cenzolovka’s research analyzed the front pages of newspapers and three AM programs, i.e. paper review segments from TV Pink, RTS and N1 from March 23rd to April 11th. The analysis shows that the undisputed champion of the headlines is Aleksandar Vucic with 28 front pages, 15 of which were neutral, 12 affirmative with only one which was more sarcastic then negative. Tanja Maksic, BIRN representative, says that the election block in all electronic media was cut down and ranged from 2 to 4 minutes, that the campaign was lead outside of it and that reports on party activities were often inserted into the non-election part of the program.
Reports filed against SPP, Informer and Pink TV
Bosko Obradovic, President of “Dveri”, announced that the coalition Dveri –SDP is filing criminal charges to the High Public Prosecutors’ Office in Belgrade and the Court for hi-tech crimes against the SPP party leaders and editors of “Informer” and Pink TV. “Cyber-attacks against the coalition Dveri-SDP are becoming more frequent and are being orchestrated from the headquarters of the Serbian Progressive Party”, says Obradovic. He said at an emergency press conference that the attacks peaked on Sunday when a supposed TV add by Dveri was posted on Youtube which contained a statement by Obradovic with a map of Serbia without Kosovo.
Hungarian exit slips
Members of the civil organization Hungarian Movement handed in 82 exit slips to the Hungarian Union of Vojvodina, dissatisfied with the party’s policies. Imre Tot, a reporter from Radio Subotica and a member of the HM, warned that radio stations that broadcasted their program in Hungarian are being shut down across Vojvodina and that HUV could have put an end to that by insisting that the coalition agreement with the Serbian Progressive Party be fully implemented and by lobbying at the Hungarian PM’s office. “Hungarians across Vojvodina are being left without news broadcasts in their native tongue while the HUV boasts from Budapest to Brussels how everything is fine. HUV also declined to acknowledge the 6.500 signatures calling for the continuation of the broadcasting of news in Hungarian on Radio Subotica”, says Tot.
Tahiri: No elections in Kosovo
EditaTahiri, a minister without a portfolio in the Government of Kosovo, said for Epoka e Re. that Serbian elections won’t be held in Kosovo since there is no legal or political basis for them. She pointed out that high profile Serbian state officials abused the agreement of normalization of relations between Pristina and Belgrade by issuing nationalistic statements during their stay on this territory.
