The government of Serbia has invited the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to send a mission to monitor the upcoming local elections in Belgrade, Prime Minister Ana Brnabic's office announced.
As stated in the announcement, a request has been sent to the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to send an expert to help improve the single electoral roll. On March 8, Burnabić reportedly held a meeting in Belgrade with the heads of the OSCE and EU offices in Serbia, Jan Bratu and Emmanuel Joffre, with the Minister of State Administration and Local Self-Government, Aleksandar Martinović, and the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Privacy Protection data Milan Marinovich.
Burnabic presented at the meeting what was done to update the voter list in Serbia from 2012 to today. "Ambassador Joffre emphasized the importance the EU attaches to the swift implementation of the ODIHR recommendations to strengthen the electoral framework," the statement said. After the parliamentary and local elections on December 17, new elections will be held in the capital Belgrade after two failed attempts to hold a constituent session. The decision was taken by the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SPS), whose list bears the name of its leader and current president of the state, Aleksandar Vucic. The reason was the impossibility of forming a government of the capital, which requires a majority of a total of 110 councilors. The democratic opposition and observers said in December that the government systematically stole the election, mainly by bringing citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina and people from towns in Serbia to vote illegally for the SPS after they were fraudulently registered at addresses in Belgrade. Therefore, they demanded a repeat of the elections in Belgrade and an international investigation into irregularities in the electoral process in Serbia.
On February 28, the ODIHR published the final report on the elections in Serbia, which stated that conditions were not equal for all due to the overwhelming participation of the country's president, Aleksandar Vucic. It added that pressure on public sector employees to vote for the government, abuse of public resources in his favor and media dominance by Vučić were recorded. On February 8, the European Parliament in a resolution called for an international investigation into irregularities in the December elections and the suspension of EU funding to Serbia if the authorities are proven to have committed electoral fraud. /BGNES
