Opposition reports irregularities during the presidential elections

The Republic Electoral Commission of Serbia (REC) is still counting ballots, but according to the results based on 91 per cent of counted ballots, current Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic will be the next Serbian President with 55.1 per cent of votes won.

While PM Vucic is celebrating victory after 2 months of intensive campaign, the opposition candidates are raising their voice against what they claim to be irregular elections.

According to reports from the opposition parties who monitored the election process, new mechanisms of voting fraud were detected at the presidential elections held on Sunday.

Academician Dusan Teodorovic claims that, only in Belgrade, his team received over 100 reports on election irregularities. Teodorovic is a member of the election team of presidential candidate Sasa Jankovic who came second.

“In Belgrade alone, we received 100 reports on elections irregularities from 24 polling stations. Our controllers and the citizens reported carrousel voting in some places, as well as the cars of the ruling Progressive Party parked in front of the polling stations,” Teodorovic told Insajder.

He said that the Group of citizens that nominated former Ombudsman Sasa Jankovic for the presidency will not forgive a single stolen vote. According to him, the ruling Progressive Party and its junior coalition partners used mechanisms of election fraud that have never been used before in Serbian elections.

President of the local Board in Novi Pazar and member of the opposition party Dveri (Doors), Marko Stefanovic, claims that a group of unidentified men attempted to bribe and threatened the local Electoral Board to put 1,000 additional filed ballots into the ballot box.

“All members of the local Electoral Board remained silent. Only Mirko Timotijevic who is our member of the Board protested,” Stefanovic told local Radio 100.

He also said that other members of local Electoral Board pressured Timotijevic after the incident.

“They even offered him to put additional ballots for our candidate Bosko Obradovic into the box as a counter favor. Our member refused it and called the police to report the incident,” he said.

Stefanovic also said that during the elections, numerous representatives of Dveri, mostly female, were exposed to constant threats and blackmail.

Member of the local REC in Kikinda, Zeljko Bodrozic, told Beta news agency that numerous irregularities were reported to the Electoral Committee.

Bodrozic said there were a number of reports in Kikinda concerning persons who were sitting in the cars outside the polls and checking who voted. He also said that most of them are members of the Electoral Boards representing the ruling coalition.

“Members of the local Electoral Boards are objecting and all the incidents will be filed in the reports,” he said.

In municipality of Kanjiza, unknown men were creating lists of people who voted and then paying them, newspaper Free Magyar So reported on Sunday. The Police was also notified.

According to writing of Free Magyar So, representatives of the opposition candidates spotted a van that drove people to the polling stations and paid them after they voted.

In Serbian northern province of Vojvodina, the Election headquarters of Sasa Jankovic announced that they will file criminal charges against unknown persons over irregularities in numerous polling stations in Vojvodina.

Mina Milanovic