Kosovo’s Election Complaints and Appeals Panel ordered the CEC to void the votes received by post from Serbia from the total and recount votes from 1,472 polling stations. The ECAP made this decision after receiving numerous complaints from political parties following the Monday announcement of the final election results. Srpska Lista, which won the majority of these votes, called it a political calculation, but this Kosovo Serb party did not appeal this decision to the Supreme Court. However, the Self-Determination Movement (LVV) did appeal to the Supreme Court against such a decision, regardless of the fact that, only a month ago, the same party requested that these „illegal votes,“ as they described them at the time, to be rejected. While the LVV appealed the decision that could cost them 3 seats in the parliament, the NISMA leader, Fatmir Limaj celebrated. According to him, without these votes, the NISMA-AKR-PD coalition will pass the threshold for the Assembly, and will win six seats.
The Nisma-AKR-PD coalition’s appeal requesting that the votes received by mail from Serbia be rejected was accepted on Monday. The CEC was then ordered to delete votes from Serbia from the total.
The Complaints and Appeals Panel has previously rejected appeals to annul these votes, stating that such requests were untimely.
The ECAP’s explanation reads that 3,782 envelopes from Serbia were declared invalid because the voting was not done by mail because two persons brought the ballots to the Post Office in Pristina.
„The A4 size boxes with the votes from Serbia were brought in by certain persons and not sent by mail which means that the conditions defined by law were not met,” the panel ruled, adding that the votes from these boxes could not be considered regular ballots as the boxes did not have a postal seal.
Boxes with votes from Serbia were personally submitted to Post Office no. 6 in Pristina by two persons – Dejan Pavicevic, a longtime Belgrade liaison officer in Pristina and another unidentified person. The CEC claims that the two men were not empowered to do so.
„The fact that the packages with the votes arrived at a certain place and were brought by two persons makes the process of voting by mail even more untrustworthy because in this case, we do not have voting by mail, but direct submission in the post office,“ the panel underlined.
The largest and by all accounts the only Kosovo Serb party in the next Assembly of Kosovo, Srpska Lista stated that ECAP’s decision „was the result of political calculations, which included the chauvinist farce – the counting of votes of displaced Serbs in protective gear.“
The party reminded the public that the ECAP had rejected the appeals to annul votes from Serbia on two previous occasions and that the votes of displaced Serbs had always arrived in the same way.
According to Srpska Lista, this decision was made in order to not allow displaced Serbs to exercise their right to choose who will represent their interests.
They made this decision when it became clear that all these votes went to Srpska Lista – they added.
The head of the Kosovo Office, Marko Djuric also condemned this decision.
However, it remains unknown whether Srpska Lista will exercise its right and appeal this decision to the Supreme Court.
On the other hand, the NISMA leader, Fatmir Limaj says that ECAP’s decision has shown „the rule of law in Kosovo“.
After this decision, NISMA and its partners are part of the Kosovo Assembly – Limaj claimed.
„As you know by now, with regular results, the Initiative and its partners are a parliamentary party. NISMA won 5.12%, we have six seats in the assembly,” he said, Pristina-based Gazeta Express reported.
Also, after receiving 52 complaints, the ECAP ordered the CEC to recount votes from 1,472 polling stations.
If the vote recount does not bring any significant changes and the votes from Serbia are not included, it is estimated that the NISMA-AKR-PD coalition will have 6 MPs in the Kosovo Assembly, while Self-Determination will lose three MPs and LDK, PDK, and AKR-PSD one MP each.
The Self-Determination Movement was also „damaged“ by this decision, given that by not counting these votes, the NISMA-AKR-PD coalition had enough votes to enter the 6-member Kosovo Assembly, which would cause the Self-Determination movement to have 29 deputies instead of 32. In addition, crossing the threshold of this coalition will also lead to the fact that the Self-Determination with 29 MPs and the LDK with 28 will not be able to form a coalition on their own, but will need four more MPs to form a coalition government.
Three candidates in the movement, Enver Haliti, Arta Bajralia and Alban Hyseni, have appealed to the Supreme Court against such a decision by the ECAP to defend their right, said CEC Self-Determination Adnan Rustemi.
„Yesterday’s decision of the ECAP has nothing to do with the election process, the regularities, or irregularities, as well as with the right to vote and the legality of voting. The problem is the victory of the Self-Determination Movement, and the goal is to reduce the number of our deputies. We cannot eliminate the problem, but they will not be able to realize the goal,“ he said.
However, just a month earlier, while attempting to count post votes received from Serbia that had been aborted due to an allergic skin reaction allegedly against CEC staff, some of whom had been even hospitalized, this movement called for the final rejection of those votes.
LVV was the first political party to qualify the case as „poisoning of employees of the postal voting service“ and called for a two-stage investigation. In addition they filed a request for these „illegal“ votes to be rejected.
“The state authorities need to investigate the cause of the poisoning as well as the fact that the packages arrived from Serbia in an organized manner. These packages were not mailed as provided for by the Election Law, but were entered illegally by the Serbian Liaison Office. Such illegally delivered votes must be rejected,“ the party said at the time.
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