Srpska Lista ignored an invitation for a debate attended by other Kosovo Serb parties at the start of the campaign for the October 6 parliamentary elections.
All three Kosovo Serb parties and one coalition were invited to the debate in Caglavica. Officials of the Freedom (Sloboda) coalition, Party of Kosovo Serbs and Serb Liberal Party showed up for the debate. Srpska Lista which has the support of official Belgrade did not show up.
The debate in Caglavica drew a reaction from Serbian government Office for Kosovo chief Marko Djuric who said that the gathering was a call for sobriety to all the Kosovo Serbs, adding that the Kosovo Serb politicians’ who aren’t part of Srpska Lista are directing their campaign against President Aleksandar Vucic.
Freedom coalition official Nenad Rasic called for more unity among the Kosovo Serbs, adding that institutional activities are the first step towards that goal. “We will initiate a dialogue among the Kosovo Serbs after the elections,” he said.
The only thing I think about is the safety of my associates and that nothing happens to anyone, and the election results themselves have been pushed into second place
„For us, the standards we don’t have come first. Not changing borders does not automatically mean that the third level of government is being created. This topic was not dealt with properly. The Association of Serb Municipalities was only talked about and that idea was discredited so much in that a year and a half long period that it did not even enter the discussion phase,“ Rasic said when asked by an Albanian journalist whether his solution was the formation of the ASM.
Rasic also said that the negotiations are at this stage precisely because the ASM was not “honestly discussed.”
Party of Kosovo Serbs leader Aleksandar Jablanovic said his party’s priority is the survival of the Serbs in Kosovo along with a fight against crime and corruption. “Our party’s first job after the elections is to deal with criminals and corruption in our ranks because the institutions in Serb communities have been trapped by criminal structures who decide on everything,” he said.
The campaign is aggressive, criminal methods are used often, mostly carried out by our Srpska Lista colleagues. We are awaiting the reactions of the police and the prosecution to all those threats and blackmail and irregularities that we have noticed and managed to document so far. And threats and layoffs are not something new to us
“Over fifty people from the Kosovo Serb Party were transferred from one job to another from 2017, 50-60 kilometers away from their place of residence. It is also a trend to unlawfully suspend people’s monthly income. A new method of pressure being applied in the north by activists and officials of Srpska Lista on members of the polling station. They are informally being asked to violate the decision of the Central Election Commission and the Constitutional Court of Kosovo on October 6th and to allow the Serbs to vote with Serbian IDs,“ Jablanovic said.
There are no Serbs south and north of the Ibar, there are Serb people in Kosovo who has certain problems that can only be solved with the help of Belgrade and Pristina
The Serb Liberal Party’s Slobodan Petrovic cited examples of pressures and threats against the members of his party and their families, as well as everyone who is not part of Srpska Lista. He also claimed that there “dozens of pieces of evidence” for his allegations, adding that the evidence was presented to institutions in Kosovo and Serbia.
Speaking about his party’s program, Petrovic defined it as „a survival program if one remains alive during this election campaign.“
Petrovic recalled that European Election Observation Mission has documented cases of intimidation during the 2017 elections, but that nothing has been resolved.
„We are afraid that this will be the case again. That the observers will only make a record of what happened and that nothing will be resolved – what happened, happened,” he said, adding:
„What worries us is the lack of reaction to these events, but we want to believe that someone will appear in this process who will have the courage and above all respect for the law, and for what their mandates dictate.“
Any ethnic division is a disaster, especially for the Serbs south of the Ibar river – he said and recalled that two thirds of the Kosovo Serbs live there and just one third live in the north of Kosovo.
All three said Srpska Lista campaign is waging an aggressive campaign using what they said are criminal methods.
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
